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HYPHENATIONS 



BY 

HERMAN RIDDER 



A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES ON THE WORLD WAR OF 1914 

WHICH HAVE APPEARED FROM TIME TO TIME 

IN THE 

NEW-YORKER STAATS-ZEITUNG 

UNDER 

"THE WAR SITUATION FROM DAY TO DAY" 




NEW YORK 

PRINTED BY MAX SCHMETTERUNC 

!9I5 






COPYRIGHT 

BERNARD H. R1DDER 

1915 



4/P 

NOV 30 1915 



'CU414838 



O those Americans in whose veins 
German blood still flows, whose 
undivided sympathy and loyalty to 
the ideals of these United States 
of America is coupled with the 
immutable remembrance of all that 
is noblest and highest in the Fatherland, these 
pages are respectfully and affectionately dedicated. 




FOREWORD 



The articles which appear in the following pages 
were originally published in "THE WAR SITUA- 
TION FROM DAY TO DAY," a column conducted 
in The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, since the beginning 
of the war, in the English language. 

This column was begun to correct for many read- 
ers less acquainted with German than English the 
countless false impressions of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary that were even then being sown by a hostile 
press broadcast throughout the country. This purpose 
has continued with it. 

There have been moments when it has not been 
easy to write temperately under the sting of indefen- 
sible attacks upon Germany by her enemies here and 
abroad ; but I have sought always to temper my words 
that they should b'e no more bitter than theirs and 
far more just. Whenever it has been a question 
between my own country and that of my fathers 
I have given wholehearted support to the former. 
Only when it was a question of supporting Germany 
or her enemies have I given rein to an inerasable 
affection for the Fatherland. The composite charac- 
ter of the American people is not to be denied its 
significance. This country has been built up by the 
toil of hands drawn from every nation on the globe 
and by their toil these hands have won for their voices 
an equal right in its political and social councils. 



FOREWORD 

If the column has made some enemies for me, it 
has made many friends for itself; and I read in this 
that the spirit of fair play is not dead entirely in 
America. I find my only reward in the reflection 
that what worth has been its is derived from common 
service to the land of my birth and the land of my 
for-b'ears. 

A large share of the actual labor of conducting the 
column has fallen to my son, Mr. Bernard H. Ridder, 
and Mr. Hamilton Butler, to whom I owe this public 
acknowledgment of unfaltering enthusiasm in the 
cause of truth and justice, to which the column is 
dedicated. I wish to thank, also, the thousands of 
readers who have supported me with words of en- 
couragement or aided by valuable suggestions and 
contributions. 

When "THE WAR SITUATION FROM DAY 
TO DAY" was started I hoped that the war would 
soon be over, and peace reign again abroad and con- 
cord at home. Alas, after many months the end is 
not yet in sight. The warring nations still grapple 
at each other's throats with daily increasing relentless- 
ness. And for what? Do they know, more than we? 

HERMAN RIDDER. 

New York, October, iqi 5, 



CONTENTS 



ARTICLE PAG E 

I When War Expends Itself, August 

16, 1914 11 

II Tsingtau, and Its Meaning to 

America, August 27, 1914. . . . 14 

III Reflections, September 6, 1914. . 18 

IV Wilhelm II, September 18, 1914. . 21 
V Servian Ambitions, Oct. 1, 1914. . 25 

VI What the Jew May Hope from 

Russia, October 2, 1914 30 

VII Capsuled War, September 25, 1914 36 

VIII A Day of Prayer, October 4, 1914 42 
IX Harvard Americanism, October 6, 

I9H 45 

X Europe's Death-grapple, October 

8, 1914 5 2 

XI Yap and Nip, October 9, 1914. . . 56 
XII Belgium's Grey Book, October 12, 
i 1914 61 

XIII A Fair Judgment, October 15 and 

16, 1914 67 

XIV Europe's War, October 23, 1914. 83 
XV Blockading America, October 24, 

I9H 8 7 

XVI A Fair Judgment (Continued), 

October 25, 1914 91 

XVII Turkey, October 31, 1914 97 

XVIII Tsingtau, November 1, 1914 101 

XIX "Starving Germany Out," Novem- 
ber 2, 1914 104 

XX A Ray of Sunshine, November 7, 

1914 108 



CONTENTS 

ARTICLE PAGE 

XXI German Barbarities, November 12, 

1914 IX 3 

XXII Machiavelli Up-to-date, November 

13, I9H 119 

XXIII The "Kaiser's War," November 

17, I9H I2 4 

XXIV "G. B. S." on the War, November 

18, 1914 13° 

XXV Thanksgiving Thoughts, Novem- 
ber 26, 1914 135 

XXVI German Atrocities Abroad, De- 
cember 1, 1914 138 

XXVII A War-proof Nation, December 

9, 1914 144 

XXVIII Congress, and Arms and Ammuni- 
tion, December 11, 1914 149 

XXIX The Burden of Humanity, Decem- 
ber 13, 1914 155 

XXX Orange Peel, December 16, 1914 158 
XXXI Counselling Germany, December 

20, 1914 162 

XXXII Pulpit and Prescience, December 

24, 1914 166 

XXXIII Xmas Thoughts, Dec. 25, 1914. . 173 

XXXIV "War against the Barbarians," 

December 26, 1914 176 

XXXV "What Have I Done To-day?", 

December 2y, 1914 181 

XXXVI Germans Militant, December 29, 

1914 186 

XXXVII Britain and American Commerce, 

December 31, 1914 191 

XXXVIII New Year's Greetings to Great 

Britain, January 1, 1915 196 



CONTENTS 



ARTICLE PAGE 

XXXIX The Solitary Sword-walker, Janu- 
ary 2, 1915 199 

XL Why German-Americans Take up 

Their Speech, January 3, 1915.. 205 
XLI National Independence vs. Par- 
tisan Sentiment, Jan. 4, 1915.. 209 
XLII New Year Thoughts for Ameri- 
cans, January 5, 1915 213 

XLIII Staying Glorified Murder, Janu- 
ary 7, 1915 219 

XLIV "The American Wants to Know," 

January 8, 191 5 224 

XLV 'Arms, and the Country,' I Sing, 

January 10, 1915 231 

XLVI Belgium's Betrayal, January 11, 

1915 237 

XLVII "1812-1915," January 12, 1915... 246 
XLVIII The Case of the "Dacia," January 

13. 1915 251 

XLIX Humbugging America, January 15, 

I9I5 256 

L Hustling for England, January 

17, 1915 261 



HYPHENATIONS 



WHEN WAR EXPENDS ITSELF. 

Sooner or later the nations engaged in war will find 
themselves spent and weary. There will be victory for 
some, defeat for others and profit for none. There 
can hardly be any lasting laurels to any of the con- 
tending parties. To change the map of Europe is not 
worth the price of a single human life. Patriotism 
should never rise above humanity. 

The history of war is merely a succession of blun- 
ders. Each treaty of peace sows the seed of future 
strife. War offends our intelligence and outrages our 
sympathies. We can but stand aside and murmer "The 
pity of it all, the pity of it all." 

I cannot lose my faith, however, that the human 
race continues to advance despite all obstacles; it 
snatches what benefits it can from every situation. 
I am optimist enough to think that a better and greater 
Europe and a better and greater German Empire will 
emerge from the hopeless chaos of to-day. 

We are living in a day of great surprises. History 
does not often furnish such examples of sudden and 
swift changes. The course of events may lead into 
unexpected channels. 



12 HYPHENATIONS 

Europe is likely to change more in the next year 
than it has in the last fifty. It is about time for the 
politics of Europe to emerge from the mediaeval 
shadow of diplomacy and be conducted in twentieth 
century fashion. In my estimation the diplomats have 
played a very important part in bringing about the 
war, by isolating Germany and Austria. 

It will be necessary to reconstruct the boundaries of 
Europe. Let it be done this time so justly, so humane- 
ly and so intelligently that there will be no necessity 
for doing it over again for some time. There is a 
close relationship, or should be, between racial and 
territorial boundaries. Most treaties have been dic- 
tated by the conquering nations with total disregard 
for natural or fixed boundaries. 

I have a steady conviction that we shall witness, 
within the year, the formation of a great Teutonic 
Empire. Germany, like other empires, was founded 
upon military supremacy and maintained by a success- 
ful commercial policy. It cannot be that it is to be laid 
away upon the shelves of history before it has de- 
veloped its full usefulness and power. The German 
contributions to science, commerce and literature are 
too real to permit the belief that its work is finished 
and a new order is to replace the old. Yet the pano- 
rama of changes may unfold with such startling sud- 
denness that the dream of Liberalist and Socialist may 
soon be realized. 

War breeds socialism. At night the opposing hosts 
rest on their arms, searching the heavens for the riddle 
of life and death, and wondering what their to-morrow 



HYPHENATIONS 13 

will bring forth. Around a thousand camp fires the 
steady conviction is being driven home that this sacri- 
fice of life might all be avoided. It seems difficult to 
realize that millions of men, skilled by years of con- 
stant application, have left the factory, the mill or the 
desk to waste not only their time but their very lives 
and possibly the lives of those dependent on them to 
wage war, brother against brother. 

The more reasonable it appears that peace must 
quickly come, the more hopeless does it seem. I am 
convinced that an overwhelming majority of the popu- 
lations of Germany, England and France are opposed 
to this war. The Kaiser emphatically does not want 
war. And yet war is raging. Let some keener mind 
than mine solve the grewsome riddle. If I were to 
guess an answer to it — I would say Russia. A fight 
between the highly civilized nations fomented by the 
miserable intrigues of a petty Balkan state. Russia 
has yet to make its first substantial offering on the 
altar of human progress. 

A thousand times rather would I prefer to see the 
organization and genius of the Teutonic races regulate 
the continent of Europe than to permit the autocracy 
of the Romanoffs to extend its sway by a single pro- 
vince. My heart aches to see the German national 
life, fostered with such loving care for so many years, 
made the stake in a war brought about by the inflated 
ambitions of the Russian Slavs. 

To shut down the laboratories and clinics and de- 
prive the German genius of its opportunity for further- 



14 HYPHENATIONS 

ing science is alone a crime crying to heaven for ven- 
geance. 

War deals in human life as recklessly as the gambler 
in money. Imagine the point of view of a commanding 
general who is confronted with the task of taking a 
fortress. "That position will cost me five thousand 
lives; it will be cheap at the price, for it must be 
taken". He discounts five thousand human lives as 
easily as the manufacturer marks off five thousand 
dollars for depreciation. And so five thousand homes 
are saddened that another flag may fly over a few feet 
of fortified masonry. What a grim joke for Europe 
to play upon humanity! 

I feel sure that every American will join in the hope 
of an early and lasting peace. The sword has been 
forced into the hands of an unwilling German 
nation, but if we read aright their history and know 
their traditions they will acquit themselves as well 
upon the battlefield as they have during the last forty 
years in the fields of science, literature and commerce. 

TSINGTAU, AND ITS MEANING TO AMERICA. 

The expected and the inevitable has happened. The 
great guns of Japan are thundering at Tsingtau. I 
am informed, from a reliable source, that Germany 
suggested to Japan the neutralization of the Far East. 
The advisers of the Mikado referred the matter to 
Britain, and the Japanese ultimatum was the result. 
The two answers to this ultimatum reveal the fearless 
determination of the German people to defend them- 



HYPHENATIONS 15 

selves with Spartan courage. "We cannot be fright- 
ened by another war," comes from Berlin. "If you 
wish Kiaochow you must take it", is reported to have 
been the challenge of its German governor to the 
Japanese. Such words lose none of their heroic strength 
from having first been uttered by the Lion of Ther- 
mopylae to the Asia of his day. The odds were not 
greater then — the cause no more just. 

The developments of the week have not conduced to 
a clarification of the situation. As a matter of fact, 
Japan's motive is more mysterious than ever. We were 
told, in the beginning, that she sought only to preserve 
the territorial integrity of China and secure to the Far 
East the blessings of permanent peace. When the 
Japanese come bearing gifts it is well to be on one's 
guard. Who has ever read Japanese diplomacy in its 
entirety? Not I, and I venture to question if there 
lives the Occidental who has so read it, or can. But 
enough of Japanese methods and aspirations have been 
discovered by a half century of contact with the civi- 
lized world to show the trend of a national policy which 
bodes no good to the American nation. 

It appeared later that Japan had been moved by a 
sense of loyalty to her ally to protect the latter s in- 
terests on the China Main. In just what way the pro- 
tection of British interests in Chinese waters may be 
expected to work for lasting peace, may be judged 
from the fact that for two centuries such "interests" 
have been the disturbing factor in the intercourse be- 
tween China and the West. 

The Japanese press is now clamoring for the reten- 



16 HYPHENATIONS 

tion of the German Leased Territory as a prize of war. 
What a change in a week ! What a pity that the world 
might not have perished seven days ago, that we might 
nave left this war-wrecked sphere in the vain but happy 
delusion that the Samurai's sword was about to be 
plunged into the back of Germany that peace might 
come to a hemisphere ! Alas that one short week should 
alter "peace "to "plunder"! 

Neither Kiaochow nor the coal mines and wheat 
fields of all Shantung will pay the price to be exacted 
later by Japan of Great Britain for this local and tem- 
porary blow to German prestige. 

If Japan succeeds in taking and holding Kiaochow, 
she will b'e able to resume her former policy of expan- 
sion, the annexation of all northern China. If anyone 
believes for a moment that Japan will stop at Tsingtau, 
let him read the story of Manchuria. 

Aside from the question of Great Britain's desire to 
limit the activities of her yellow ally, the sincerity of 
which I doubt, there arises the further question of her 
ability to do so, or even courage to attempt it. Will 
Great Britain dare, when Japan says to her : "Hands 
off!" to imperil all that her ally means to her, by op- 
posing her activities in any sphere in which outside 
of strictly "British interests" she may choose to pursue 
them? 

In this connection I cannot do better than quote from 
an editorial in the "Penang Gazette and Straits Chron- 
icle" of May 30th, 1914, for a copy of which I am 
indebted to Mr. T. R. Helms of Chiswold, Del., on a 
speech of General Sir Ian Hamilton in which he 



HYPHENATIONS 17 

warned the people of Australia that they lived under 
the shadow of an impending race struggle with the 
"rice-eaters" of Asia. The leader says : 

"When self-constituted, stay-at-home critics in their 
absurd adulation of our shrewd and capable Japanese 
allies, likened Togo to the Great Nelson on the strength 
of Tsushima, they blundered, and blundered sadly. 
When they took enterprising students with the imita- 
tive faculty highly and wonderfully developed into the 
naval yards of Britain their admirers made an even 
worse mistake. And when they — with a marvellous 
foresight as they plead — formed, before then, the 
Anglo-Japanese Alliance they sowed the seeds of a 
sinister crop to bridge temporary troubles. Britain and 
Britain alone has fostered the quiet little men's burn- 
ing ideas of dominance in Asia." 

With this warning before us, do we not owe it to 
ourselves and to our children and our children's child- 
ren to open our eyes to the danger of it all? If we 
believe, as we say we do, in the virtues of our institu- 
tions, are we not bound in moral duty to vouchsafe in- 
tact to our posterity what we have inherited from our 
forefathers — a white man's civilization? 

If there are those so blinded by the lotus-fumes of 
Oriental adulation as to be no longer able to discern 
the insidious approach of the East, I bid them read, 
mark and digest the following statement of an official 
of the Japanese Embassy at Washington on August 
25th: 

"Despite Japan's assurances to this country," says 
the Sun, "that she intended to confine her war activi- 



18 HYPHENATIONS 

ties to the China seas, the Japanese diplomat who for 
obvious reasons refused to be quoted, said the scope 
of Japan's action depends largely upon her ally, Great 
Britain. 

"If the war exigencies of England should require 
assistance by Japan outside of the Far East, this 
Japanese official stated, Nippon would by her treaty 
obligations be forced to seriously consider giving as- 
sistance outside of Asia." 

I put it to Great Britain frankly : Does she intend to 
invoke the arms of the yellow man of Japan against 
the white man of Germany? I put it to the American 
people : Cannot they see in this pronouncement of the 
Japanese diplomat the loosening of the leashes? 

I plead with the American people to open their eyes 
to the danger which confronts them. The day cannot 
be long postponed when the Island Empire of the East 
will call upon the Island Kingdom of the West, and 
together they will strike at our own land, even as they 
are now striking at Germany and Austria. When that 
day comes, we shall turn back to the month of August 
In the year 1914, and read the first chapter of the 
cataclysm. 

REFLECTIONS. 

I have stolen a few days from the excitement and 
turmoil of New York to find some rest from the fierce 
activity of the past month. As I passed through the 
green fields and happy hamlets, I felt the contrast 
between this peaceful, mellow September evening in 
Jersey and the rack and ruin of the same September 



HYPHENATIONS 19 

day on the fields of France. I have never been more 
grateful for the long three thousand mile expanse of 
ocean that separates us from this miserable quarrel. 

I dare say, you as well as I have pondered on the 
uselessness of it all. If the representatives of the 
nations involved were to gather round a table to settle 
the matter, the first difficulty to determine would be 
the answer to the question, "What is it all about?" 
History may well call it "the causeless war." 

I can imagine the oriental point of view towards the 
melee. With what a smile of sarcastic superiority the 
Japanese can view this "white man's war". Have we, 
then, white men to spare that we can lose hundreds 
of thousands of the youngest and best of our kind? 
Picture the magnificent manhood of Britain, the sturdy 
sons of France, and the peace-loving Belgians destroy- 
ing and being destroyed. Opposed to them is the 
flower of young Germany and Austria offering itself 
up as a sacrifice to the Gods of Conflict. It is all too 
horrible, too impossible. 

The losses must have been already enormous. One 
German regiment that I saw in Berlin but two years 
ago is no more. There is hardly a town, nay hardly 
a home in all Western Europe that will not be mourn- 
ing its most vigorous and able bread-winner. In one 
month war has undone the work of decades. 

It is well for us that there is a sharp difference of 
opinion and sympathy in this country regarding the 
events that are now taking place in Europe. It is our 
best protection against being embroiled in them. Were 
we all of one mind and one heart we might be tempted 



20 HYPHENATIONS 

to allow our feelings to outrun our judgment. In 
this case there is safety in division. 

I feel that the time is at hand for a cessation of 
hostilities. The results are too staggering for a con- 
tinuation. The warring nations must realize, despite 
their being blinded by hopeless patriotism, that it is 
better to end it all, before severe reverses make a quick 
solution impossible. Whatever honor was at stake, 
and I for one do not believe that the honor of any of 
the parties was at question, has long since been satis- 
fied. Germany can well afford to rest content. Her 
men are as powerful in war as they are in peace. 
Britain can point with pride to the heroism of her 
soldiers on the retreat from Mons to Paris. France 
has rallied to her colors and made her sacrifices with 
the bravery characteristic of that wonderful nation. 
These three sons, the favorites of fortune, should lay 
aside their arms and return to the commercial rivalry 
that has advanced the cause of civilization so material- 
ly in the past forty years. 

I am tempted to sentimentalize over the terrific 
losses during the bloody campaign of August. I am 
old enough to see the tragedy of it all. It hurts to 
think of the loss of that splendid manhood, robbed of 
the fullness of life, robbed of the joys of maturity, for 
not all the pleasures of life belong to youth. They 
are cut down in a mad, hysterical scramble of the na- 
tions. 

There is a pathological reason for this war. It is 
nothing more nor less than an expression of the intense 
nervousness of the age. We are too highstrung. The 



HYPHENATIONS 21 

nations are suffering acute neurasthenia. The fear 
and suspicion of the one of the other is but the hallu- 
cination characteristic of their nervous condition. 

I believed that an adjustment to the normal would 
follow the first few weeks of fighting. I had high 
hopes of peace, but the promise seems already too long 
in the keeping. 

Have you ever noticed how some grim detail of a 
great tragedy will cling in the memory and how the 
mind will continue to revert to that one fact? One 
afternoon of last week a flaring headline of one of 
our dailies caught my eye. "6,000,000 men in battle." 
I have seen that headline in my waking as well as my 
sleeping hours. It tells the story better than a volume 
could describe it. One naturally broods over the chain 
of thoughts such a suggestion makes. Misery and con- 
fusion will come to us all. The thing comes nearer to 
us every day. The bonds that hold us to Europe have 
not been severed without considerable business aches. 
They will not be reestablished without the hurt being 
generally felt. 

WILHELM II. 

The present war has been made the occasion for re- 
newed outbreaks on the part of the press throughout 
the world against the Kaiser. Ever since the day, 
twenty-six years ago, when Wilhelm II. ascended the 
throne of his fathers, he has been the subject of con- 
stant editorial attack. The mass of calumnies, of dis- 
torted motives and of petty vituperation that has been 
levelled at him has been in direct proportion to the 



22 HYPHENATIONS 

measure of success which has attended his efforts 
for the peaceful promotion of the legitimate interests 
of his people. 

I have followed the career of the Emperor from the 
day of his accession, through the long years when 
Germany struggled for a greater national existence, 
down to the present day of storm and stress. I have 
felt honored by his acquaintance and by his friendship. 
I am a sincere admirer of his extraordinary ability and 
resourcefulness. I can understand the devotion of his 
German people and their complete unity of purpose 
under his leadership. Whether the standard be Ger- 
man or American, the answer is inevitable, the Em- 
peror is a man with all that such a term implies. He 
is a great man, a just man and a well-beloved man. 

The Emperor has almost a religious conviction in 
regard to his duty towards his country. No personal 
motives play any part in his scheme of life. He is as 
much devoted to his particular calling of governing 
and brings the same point of view towards his profes- 
sion as the young man towards the vocation of priest- 
hood. The Emperor believes that he has been called 
to perform a great work, and he brings a noble sense 
of duty towards its fulfillment. 

Less than any man whom I have studied does he 
yield to the prejudice of any particular group that hap- 
pens temporarily to surround him. He favors the 
army, "his beloved army", because the army is the staff 
upon which Germany leans in times of peril. Imagine 
where Germany would be to-day without an army to 



HYPHENATIONS 23 

defend her borders from the enemies that are being 
hurried from all parts of the world against her. 

The confidence of the Emperor in the German army 
has not been misplaced. It is a great machine and has 
proven itself capable of great deeds. When the history 
of the campaign of France is written it will show that 
von Moltke was not "an accident", as so many Ameri- 
can papers delight in saying. The first rush for Paris 
did not succeed, but the next advance will have an 
entirely different character. There have been no Ger- 
man routs, no great reverses. Fortunately the re- 
ports from London and Paris do not alter the facts 
of the case. Regardless of the coloring given at the 
time, sooner or later the facts appear. As the London 
Times naively remarks, "The truth must out." 

The advice of Dr. Dernburg, given in a speech at a 
benefit performance for the German Red Cross, is 
well worthy of the attention of German- Americans : 

"How can you help the Fatherland in this most 
difficult situation ? Above all by a quiet demeanor and 
dignified attitude. It accomplishes no useful purpose 
to quarrel because the American people have no 
sympathy for that sort of thing. In the days of our 
victories we will rejoice, but we will not whine when 
we suffer the reverses which the fortunes of war may 
bring. We will emphasize the justness of our cause 
in those circles where it is worth while. We have too 
much respect for ourselves to answer the attacks of 
our opponents, lie for lie or exaggeration for exag- 
geration. We refute with contempt, but nevertheless 
with moderation of expression, the charges of German 



24 HYPHENATIONS 

cruelties which we know to be foreign to our civili- 
zation and our temperament. Your own character and 
your own experience in this country furnish the best 
evidence of that fact. 

"What we should, however, bring home to the 
American people are the facts of our mutual ideals, 
our mutual commercial interests and a century of 
friendship between the United States and Germany. 
If they hold the term 'militarism' before you, ask 
them which other nation in the world always had more 
than one enemy to protect itself against, and if they 
assert that the German people through this 'militar- 
ism' were led into a war, then you can point to the fact 
of the unity of the German people and in what a firm 
and noble manner it is fighting its battle. 

"I consider the 4th of August of this year as one of 
the most inspiring days that it has been my fortune to 
live. At the opening of the German Reichstag in the 
Palace of Berlin, I stood in the first row and saw, calm 
and determined, the elected representatives of the 
German People, the assured and stern generals, and 
simple and alone, without decoration or attendance, 
the Emperor in his field uniform. With hope and 
confidence in his voice, the Kaiser read his speech. As 
this man in this hour held the responsibility for the 
history of Germany in his hands, as this man stepped 
from the platform, he said those few words which will 
always have an immense importance in German poli- 
tical history : 'What I told my beloved people of Berlin 
from the balcony of the palace, I repeat to you : From 
to-day I know no distinction in rank, no diversity of 



HYPHENATIONS 25 

parties, no difference of religions. I am a German 
with my German people and I call on the leaders of 
all parties to swear the same oath with me and to con- 
firm it b'y laying their hand in mine.' As these men 
stepped forward to shake the hand of the Emperor, 
the spirit of a great hour fell over the assembled thou- 
sands and as we sang the National Anthem, I can as- 
sure you it sounded different from a school festival 
or a veterans' anniversary." 

SERVIAN AMBITIONS. 

The publication of the Russian "Orange Paper" 
throws important, and what may be regarded as prac- 
tically definite light on the question of immediate re- 
sponsibility for the present war of the nations. The 
British and German "White Papers" already given to 
the reading world have contained nothing that ap- 
proaches in definitiveness the confession of the Rus- 
sian Foreign Office of the fatherly interest taken by 
Russia in the affairs of Servia, and the filial obed- 
ience with which Belgrade responded thereto. I have 
had occasion previously to draw attention to the well- 
defined policies of Russia and Servia. It remained, 
however, for the Russian Government to show how 
closely interlocked they were and with what complete 
accord both were working, or being worked, toward 
their fulfillment. 

The ambitions of Servia may be described as the 
extention of her territory and the increase of her popu- 
lation by the detachment from the Austro-Hungarian 



26 HYPHENATIONS 

Empire of those adjacent provinces in which the Slavic 
element predominates. These ambitions, in themselves, 
may be regarded as laudable or otherwise, according 
to the political and ethical frame of mind of the ob- 
server. It is perhaps possible that Mexico would like 
to see returned to her all that southwestern portion of 
the United States which once was hers. As long as 
such feelings remain within bounds they do not con- 
stitute a casus belli with Mexico. But should the Mexi- 
can people attempt by a campaign of education, backed 
by secret murder and open assassination, to secure the 
restitution of this territory to Mexico, and should it 
be discovered that this campaign had the support of 
the authorities in Mexico City, I do not believe we 
should hesitate long in demanding of Mexico an under- 
standing quite as vigorous as that which Austria-Hun- 
gary asked of Servia. Were such a campaign to cul- 
minate in the assassination of the President of the 
United States or of his Secretary of State, as in Servia 
it ended in the murder of the Austrian Archduke, I 
ani sure our act of retribution would be swifter. That 
Austria should have taken the stand which she event- 
ually took is not surprising. It is cause for marvel only 
that she did not assume it months before. 

The frame of mind of the Servian people upon the 
conclusion of the Balkan war may be compared with 
that of the Japanese after their successful war with 
Russia. They had beaten the enemy and, consequently, 
could lick the world. If we carry the comparison 
further, however, we must admit that the Servian 
Government, like the Japanese, held a more conserva- 



HYPHENATIONS 27 

tive estimate of its powers. And it is, and all along 
has been, impossible of conception that Servia would 
have maintained herself in the position of defending 
the anti-Austrian propaganda unless she had been able 
to depend implicitly upon the support of a strong ally. 
Tihe ambitions of the Servian people could not be rea- 
lized without the aid of Russia, and in return for that 
aid Servia was willing to act as a cat's paw to draw 
Austria-Hungary into a conflict in which Russia would 
come to her support, and at the same time find an ex- 
cuse for annexing, if possible, the Galician provinces. 

All this has been known by those who have followed 
the course of events in the Balkans in recent years. 
It is confirmed now by the Russian Foreign Office. 

If Servia had depended impartially upon the powers 
signatory to the several Balkan conventions, why was 
it that the Austrian note of July 23rd reached St. 
Petersburg the same day from Belgrade, and was not 
communicated to the Foreign Offices of the other in- 
terested powers? It reached them apparently only 
through the diplomatic channels of Austria-Hungary. 
If Russia and Servia were not playing a concerted 
game of political intrigue, what excuse can be offered 
for this oversight on the part of the Government in 
Belgrade? If Servia wanted peace, why did she refer 
her troubles only to Russia, who, she knew, wanted 
war? 

The oft-repeated assertion that the Czar did his best 
to preserve the peace of Europe is contradicted by the 
published documents of his own Foreign Office. It 
develops from a reading of the telegram of July 24th, 



28 HYPHENATIONS 

the day before the time limit set in the Austrian ulti- 
matum elapsed, from the Prince Regent of Servia to 
His Majesty the Emperor in St. Petersburg, that Ser- 
via was "ready to accept the Austro-Hungarian con- 
ditions which are compatible with the situation of an 
independent State as well as those whose acceptance 
shall be advised us by your Majesty." In other words, 
Belgrade was ready to submit to the just and natural 
demands of Vienna, if only His Majesty gave the word. 
Had the Czar counseled Servia as every consideration 
of propriety demanded he should counsel her, there 
would have been no conflict between Austria and 
Servia. In this hour of opportunity, however, the 
Czar chose to be consistent rather than correct. Having 
encouraged the Servian propaganda for his own pur- 
poses and by the promise of support, it was perhaps 
too late for him to retrace his steps. It was easier, 
apparently, to go ahead and attempt to see the thing 
through, and that is what he did. With the long-sought 
pretext at hand, it would have been bad management 
from the Russian point of view to pass it up. The 
Russian army and the French had been whipped into 
shape and the British fleet was being held in leash. It 
was now or perhaps never for Russia to strike for the 
accomplishment of her aims. 

But even when war had become inevitable between 
Austria and Servia, the impossibility of Russia not 
coming to the aid of Servia can be explained only on 
the grounds of consistency. There could have been 
no possible outcome of such a conflict which called 
upon Russia to intervene on one side or the other, ex- 



HYPHENATIONS 29 

cept that she had backed Servia against Austria to a 
point from which she could not retreat without "losing 
face." It is clear now what Russia stands and has 
stood for — intrigue against neighboring states, murder 
and assassination. T;he pretense that she sought peace 
by asking delay on the part of Austria is too shallow 
to hold much water. To her, and to her alone, was it 
given to counsel Servia in the right direction and she 
refused to do so. Even then it was given her to allow 
Austria and Servia to settle their dispute without her 
interference. When she failed in this, she failed to 
preserve the peace of Europe. 

It is idle to talk now of what the German Emperor 
might have done. As an ally of the Austrian Emperor 
he could not be expected to counsel Austria against de- 
manding of Servia the righting of wrongs which had 
come to be intolerable. He did what he could to loca- 
lize the war, did more than any other sovereign of 
Europe, and his efforts to this end ceased only when 
it became unmistakably apparent that Russia could not 
be swerved from her purpose of attacking Austria. 

The then position of Germany was sufficiently ex- 
plained in the note banded to the British Government, 
on July 24th, by the German Ambassador at the Court 
of St. James. 

"The Imperial Government want to emphasize their 
position that in the present case there is only question 
of a matter to be settled exclusively between Austria- 
Hungary and Servia, and that the great powers ought 
seriously to endeavor to reserve it to those two im- 
mediately concerned. The Imperial Government de- 



30 HYPHENATIONS 

sire urgently the localization of the conflict, because 
every interference of another power would, owing to 
the different treaty obligations, be followed by incal- 
culable consequences." 

It was not the entrance of Germany into the war 
that started the conflagration, but the unwarranted in- 
terference of Russia in a quarrel which was not hers, 
and when history writes the story of 1914 the name 
that will stand out pre-eminently before all others, 
written in letters of blood, will be Nicholas II. 

WHAT THE JEW MAY HOPE FROM RUSSIA. 

The well known Secretary of the American Jewish 
Committee, Mr. Herman Bernstein, in his preface to 
the "American Jewish Year Book," which appears to- 
day, says: 

"The Beilis affair has constituted the darkest trage- 
dy of the Jews in recent years. The evil forces of the 
Russian Empire conspired against them, an innocent 
Jew was tortured in prison for two years and a half, 
and the entire Jewish people in Russia was threatened 
with pogrom panics through this political conspiracy. 
In the Beilis affair, the Russian Government's policy 
of cruel, militant anti-Semitism reached its culmina- 
tion. Just as the civilized world was shocked at the 
Kishineff massacres, so it was appalled when the Rus- 
sian Government revived the infamous blood legend 
for the purpose of discrediting the Jewish people and 
justifying new massacres. 

"The list of events in Russia during the past twelve- 



HYPHENATIONS 3i 

month recorded in this scheme reveals a painful state 
of affairs. The sufferings and hopelessness of the 
Jew in the Pale of Settlement are shown in the simple 
records of 'ordinary' happenings, of wholesale ex- 
pulsions, — silent, wordless progress — of new devices of 
persecution, of the suppression of education, and of 
the ritual murder delirium with which the Russian 
Government has crazed the minds of the Russian 
masses." 

Some weeks ago it was reported from Europe that 
the Czar had issued an ukase promising to the Jews 
in Russia complete civil rights. Using this ukase as 
his text, Israel Zangwill, the noted Jewish author and 
playwright of England, sent out to the Jews of neutral 
countries, not long after, an appeal for Jewish sym- 
pathy and Jewish prayers for Great Britain in her 
present "war for freedom." 

It is apparent from the tone of the Jewish press in 
the United States and from letters written by promi- 
nent members of the Jewish community, that Mr. 
Zangwill's "manifesto" has fallen, so far as this coun- 
try is concerned, upon sterile soil. The British ad- 
vertising clique was unfortunate in the choice of Mr. 
Zangwill as the man to address the Jews of the world, 
for great as his work has been in the field of literature, 
he has come to be regarded by Jews the world over, 
with the possible exception of those in England, as one 
no longer in touch with the sufferings of his race in 
less tolerant countries and one who has little sympathy 
with the true racial aspirations of his people. But even 
had Mr. Zangwill been the one man to appeal, on the 



32 HYPHENATIONS 

strength of the Russian ukase, for Jewish sympathy 
for England, what had he to offer them in return for 
such sympathy or as an excuse for his appeal? 

The story of the Jew in America is known to all — 
of the Jew in Europe to not so many. I know it suffi- 
ciently well to state, however, that in England alone 
have the Jewish people received complete civil rights. 
In France and Germany their condition is not so good 
as in England, but it is as far divided from their con- 
dition in Russia and the Balkan states as high heaven 
is from hell. The great majority of the Jews in this 
country come not from the British Isles but from Rus- 
sia and southeastern Europe and have come here to 
escape the horrors of the persecutions to which they 
were subjected there. These Jews have not forgotten 
what they and their fathers suffered from the lash of 
the Cossack and the riflebutt of an ignorant and 
bigoted soldiery. They remember the pogroms of 
Kishineff as vividly as Mr. Zangwill the banquets at 
which he has been feasted in London. And many of 
them have friends and relatives submitting to this same 
treatment to-day, unable to escape from Russia. It 
is not probable that such Jews will lend their prayers 
to the Anglo-Russian combine until the condition of 
their race in Russia has been definitely and concretely 
improved. 

And what is Mr. Zangwill's assurance that in the 
event of a Russian victory over Germany such will be 
the case ? Sir Edward Grey has said that in that event 
he will "encourage" Russia to alter her present attitude 
toward her Jewish subjects! I do not wish to impugn 



HYPHENATIONS 33 

the word of the British Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs. Above all, he is "a man of his word." So 
true was he to the promises that he had given behind 
the backs of Parliament and the British people to 
Russia and France, that he plunged his country into an 
unpopular war. The combined efforts of the cinemato-' 
graph, the spell-binders of the Government and a press 
campaign by such writers as Mr. Zangwill, have failed 
to rouse England to Sir Edward's duty. The Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs will undoubtedly carry out his 
promise and "encourage" Russia, when the Cossack is 
in Berlin, but of what avail will it be? We have had 
our own experience in such things. When Russia ac- 
cepts the abrogation of her American treaty, as a pro- 
test against her treatment of the Jew, without turning 
a hair, what respect may she be expected to show for 
the "encouragement" of her ally? 

The attitude of England toward the suffering Jew 
in other countries is already in black and white. A 
clause of the "Berlin Tractate" of 1878, to which Great 
Britain was signatory, demands of Rumania that she 
accord to her Jewish subjects equal rights with those 
of other religious beliefs. The treatment of the Jew 
in Rumania to-day is known to be and for years to 
have been no less brutal and revolting than that ex- 
perienced in Russia. And yet, can we doubt that Eng- 
land, and especially Sir Edward Grey, has "encour- 
aged" Rumania to alleviate these conditions? England 
is true to her treaties. She has told us that so often 
these last few weeks that it would seem impossible for 
anyone but herself to doubt it. But what good has 



34 HYPHENATIONS 

come of it ? Has all England's encouragement brought 
back to life a single Jew foully murdered because he 
chose to worship God in the manner of his fathers? 
Has it erased the scars from one Jewish back, wrought 
there by the lash of an avaricious police? Has it won 
him the right to live where he will, to possess property 
in security, and to educate his children in the schools 
which he is compelled to support ? It has done no one 
of these things, and it will do no more to Russia. In- 
stead of looking forward to a contingency which at 
best is highly problematical, Mr. Zangwill should have 
looked back and told the Jews what England has al- 
ready done for them in the dominions of the Slav. 

We have seen what the Jew may expect from Eng- 
land in return for his sympathy and support. Let us 
look for a moment at what he may rightly expect from 
Russia. 

The "word of a Romanoff" is a proverb among the 
downtrodden subjects of the Czar. Its value is known 
to Jew and Christian alike. It is given to-day and re- 
tracted to-morrow. When the voice of the oppressed 
rises to the ears of the Little Father in times of peace 
it is stilled by the crack of the knout and the clank of 
Siberian chains. When the throne rocks on the waves 
of an unpopular war it is necessary to meet it with 
other weapons. It is then the open season for con- 
ciliatory ukases. Alexander I. promised Finland its 
autonomy under conditions not dissimilar from those 
which exist to-day, and what has Finland profited 
thereby ? The Russo-Japanese war purchased a Duma, 
but so emasculated that its place is rather with the 



HYPHENATIONS 35 

sewing circles of Victorian England than with the par- 
liamentary bodies of civilized States. The present con- 
flict has developed the inner dissension of the Russian 
Empire to the limit. Poles are asked to fight Poles, 
Jews to fight not only other Jews but a country which 
has treated the race with a large measure of justice. 

We have had, therefore, two examples of "the word 
of a Romanoff." The first was to Poles, but that has 
since been retracted by the Russian commanders in 
Galicia, when they found Austrian Poles fighting 
against them. The second was to "my beloved Jews." 
But what proof has the Jew in America that the sig- 
nature of the Little Father has been affixed to this 
other ukase, promising his people in Russia full civil 
rights? It has even been asserted, and on authority 
quite as good as that on which the publication of the 
ukase in question was made, that the whole story of the 
Czar's promise to his "beloved Jews" is a fabrication 
for foreign consumption. 

I do not doubt that Russia wishes to conciliate the 
Jews at the present time, not only at home but abroad. 
She has spurned their religion and cannot, therefore, 
care very much for their prayers. She can use, how- 
ever, and to good advantage, their money, their brains 
and their lifeblood. In the last analysis it is that 
which she seeks. If Mr. Zangwill had been moved by 
a spirit of loyalty to his race it is that which he would 
have penned in his manifesto. 

When, however, he comes before them with the plea 
that England is fighting a war of freedom against 
German "militarism" he misjudges his audience. The 



36 HYPHENATIONS 

Jew can read through the tenuous fabric of his words 
as easily as anyone. It is not a war of England against 
Germany, but so far as England is concerned, a war 
for the destruction of German sea power and the sei- 
zure of Germany's outlying colonies. So far as in- 
ternal Europe is concerned, it is a war between Russia 
and Germany. True, Germany has her militarism, but 
she has also her culture, her refinement and her justice. 
Russia has only militarism, in an exaggerated and 
brutal form. She can offer no one redeeming trait of 
government or polity. Of the two the Jew will know 
which to choose. The appeal of Mr. Zangwill asks the 
Jews of America to forget too much. It asks them 
also to believe too much. They have no fight with 
England, but they will not help England to help Russia. 
When Mr. Zangwill can guarantee that equal rights 
will be accorded to the Jews in Russia, they will listen 
to him. When he can secure the guarantee of Sir Ed- 
ward Grey to the same effect, they will listen to him. 
When he can offer the guarantee of anyone but a 
Romanoff, they will listen to him. But not before. 

CAPSULED WAR. 

As I glance through the New York papers from day 
to day and see the amount of criticism that is being 
heaped upon my head because of my editorial policy 
with regard to the Staats-Zeitung, I often wonder 
wherein lies the blame which attaches to me. Do my 
critics believe for a moment that the Staats-Zeitung 
should follow the path of the New York Herald, for 



HYPHENATIONS 37 

instance, and become a French paper published in the 
German language? Do not misunderstand me, for I 
have the most sincere admiration for the New York 
Herald and its frank declaration of friendship for 
France. 

An editor must have the courage of his conviction 
and no man can truthfully tell me that I am afraid to 
print what I believe to be true. If I were to publish 
an American paper printed in the English language 
I would conduct it in the same vigorous and definite 
manner that I conduct an American paper printed in 
the German language. I, for one, have no patience 
with the journalistic code that permits a publisher to 
conduct one paper for one side and another for the 
other. As an example, consider Mr. W. R. Hearst, 
and anyone will do for an example. He prints a pic- 
ture of British troops in his New York American of 
Sept. 9th, and the descriptive matter reads: "This is 
the type of English soldier who is doing such tremen- 
dous work on the battle front in France." The same 
day he brings the same picture in his German paper 
and the descriptive matter is arranged to suit the Ger- 
man taste, reading: "British troops that run so fast 
that it is not possible for the Germans to capture them." 
However, that is the business of Mr. Hearst and not 
mine. If he is successful in keeping his left hand from 
knowing what his right hand is doing and at the same 
time in satisfying his constituents on both sides, he is 
performing a feat of journalistic legerdemain which 
calls for applause from all galleries. 

I do not doubt that England and the friends of Eng- 



38 HYPHENATIONS 

land would like to see the war in Europe sugar-coated 
and capsuled for the particular benefit of the inhabi- 
tants of the British Isles. Among those friends of 
England I class a certain element of the American 
press, which is to-day crying out against the partial 
destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. Two weeks 
ago this same element of the press featured in its Sun- 
day editions the utilization by the enemies of Germany 
of cathedral towers to mount guns against airships. 
I have been attacked and villainized because I could 
see in the damage done to the cathedral in Rheims 
nothing beyond what was required by the circumstan- 
ces of the case. It is the purest piffle to say that be- 
cause Rheims has been spared through seven centuries 
it should be spared to-day. During no one of those 
seven centuries was Rheims the center of conflict be- 
tween a million men fighting for their hearths and 
homes and a greater number bent on the destruction 
of the same. It is not necessary to go into the details 
of military privileges in the time of war. The most 
simple-minded editorial writer must admit not only 
the possibility of unintentional damage to the promi- 
nent landmarks in the theatre of operation, but also 
the right of each belligerent to protect himself against 
the employment of such landmarks by the enemy. We 
cannot discuss the war at all unless we are prepared 
to accept the word of each side with the same faith in 
its integrity. The German Emperor has expressed 
himself clearly and unmistakably in the sense that the 
armies of Germany will not resort to unnecessary acts 
of destruction. Let us be candid and fair-minded and 



HYPHENATIONS 39 

accept this assurance until the contrary is proven. We 
have to date absolutely nothing in controversion there- 
of. It is not without the bounds of probability that the 
fortunes of war should bring the allied armies to the 
banks of the Rhine and that the great Gothic cathedral 
at Cologne should suffer a fate similar to that of the 
cathedral in Rheims. If that day should come to pass, 
England would have a very different line of argument 
to offer. 

It is a simple matter to talk of reprisals, when the 
war has been carried into German territory. Such talk, 
however, can serve but one purpose: to justify what 
German arms have done in Belgium and France. In 
the same breath England cries out against the destruc- 
tion of Louvain and Rheims and then promises to de- 
stroy the first piece of art she can lay her hands upon 
in Germany. Would it not raise a greater meed of 
sympathy in the world at large if that self-satisfied 
nation which has stirred up this world conflagration 
would take its stand solidly on one side of the fence 
or the other? 

I feel as keenly as any man can the irreparable loss 
to art and architecture involved in the present war, b'ut 
what I cannot and will not allow myself to be talked 
or wailed or bulldozed into thinking is that the destruc- 
tion of material things can be compared with the wip- 
ing out of the thousands of human lives that are being 
cut short in this unholy struggle forced upon Germany. 
I have been assailed on every side because I have not 
joined in the general pro-English outcry against the 
inevitable results of war in the country of the enemy. 



40 HYPHENATIONS 

If I could see one single point where Germany has been 
wrong or the wail of the Allies justified I would go 
half way to meet my assailants. 

On the contrary, I cannot but feel that the American 
people are being asked to forget a great deal in order 
that they may place their faith implicitly in the logic 
of England's present expression of horrified surprise 
at the eventualities which have taken place on the Con- 
tinent. The halls of the national museum of London 
are crowded with the loot of the world. It is well- 
nigh a century now since Byron taunted Britain with 
the theft of the "Elgin Marbles" and they have not 
yet been returned to the Parthenon. In the smallness 
of our occidental vision we are inclined to magnify the 
value of Europe's treasures of art, to the disadvantage 
of those of the East. Those who are loudest in their 
criticism of the necessary results of armed conflict in 
Europe, forget the blackened swath of British arms 
in India, carved from one end of the country to the 
other by the ruthless policy of instilling respect by 
the wanton destruction of religious edifices. It does 
not matter whether reared to Jehovah, Jove or Lord, 
religious houses should be spared when possible and 
British arms forgot this fact in India and China. Why 
then should Britain and a pro-British press in this 
country raise their voices when a temple meets an un- 
fortunate fate in a city held and defended by the 
enemy ? 

The whole plaint is too hypocritical, too much in 
keeping with England's whole plan of campaign against 
Germany, to be deserving of serious consideration on 



HYPHENATIONS 41 

this side of the water. The value of England's sin- 
cerity in condemning Germany's conduct of the war is 
measured by her talk of reprisals in kind on German 
soil. By virtue of German foresight and preparedness 
the conflict is now being waged in the territory of the 
enemy. But does one single misguided soul on this 
side of the Atlantic believe for a moment that were the 
theatre of war now on German soil British and French 
arms would respect Germany's art treasures one whit 
more than German arms, bound by the necessities of 
war, have respected those of France and Belgium? The 
answer is in the Louvre and the London museum. 

I don't like war. I have written against it and spok- 
en against it, but as long as we must have this dignified 
sort of murder on earth let us be fair and square with 
one another and recognize its inevitabilities. England 
sifted out the nations of the world for her allies to 
destroy Germany, and now sits back and watches them 
do her bidding. When Germany, with the world at 
her throat, avails herself of the rights of war, England 
is horrified. If we go deeper, the reason for it all will 
become readily apparent. Great Britain, with all her 
allies, has bitten off a much larger piece of war than 
she can comfortably masticate. The fear of German 
submarines and of German dirigibles has found a place 
in the hearts around Bow Bells, and cannot be ex- 
plained away on the grounds of "strategic retreats." 
At last Germany is after Great Britain and as the 
sugar-coating falls off from the war, and Great Britain 
begins to feel what she has brought upon herself, she 
raises the cry of the spanked child that Germany is not 



42 HYPHENATIONS 

playing fair. It is a late day, however, to try to create 
sympathy by any such means. 

A DAY OF PRAYER. 

This day has been set aside by proclamation of the 
President of the United States as a day of prayer and 
supplication, to petition Almighty God to "restore once 
more that concord among men and nations without 
which there can be neither happiness nor true friend- 
ship nor any wholesome fruit of toil or thought in the 
world." 

Whatever the feelings of power that were aroused at 
the thought of a world war, the event has more than 
justified expectation. We were too confident that this 
thing could never be and yet it has come, and now we 
stand aside and watch the orgy of blood, we argue and 
quarrel and lay the blame now on the one and again 
on the other. We sentimentalize and we scold and yet, 
we, a nation of one hundred millions, are helpless to 
stay the hands that blast so many lives as unconcernedly 
as though they were dealing in scrap. It seems too 
gruesome to think that this thing can continue day for 
day with all the devilish ingenuity of the developed 
modern mind and that it threatens to bridge the weary 
months with its millions of losses in lives and money. 

Often I am so oppressed with the horror of it all, 
so utterly tired of stories of barbarity, atrocity, cruelty 
and death, that I shudder when I take up the morning 
paper. War places a heavy hand upon the heart — a 
heavy weight upon the mind. We can but pray that 



HYPHENATIONS 43 

in some miraculous manner peace will come, and that 
with the passing of the blood-red harvest moon we 
can go back to our every-day toil without the spirit of 
this great calamity hanging over our heads. It was, 
indeed, a whimsical fate that reserved this greatest of 
all wars for our twentieth century. 

If our prayers for peace are heard, a great burden 
will be lifted from the women in Europe. After all 
they pay the greatest price. We men sacrifice so reck- 
lessly the life they create with so much loving care and 
desperate suffering. For each soldier who bleeds his 
life away prematurely, some woman has gone down 
into the Valley of Death, to give him that life from 
which humanity has received so little return. 

The human body has been reared at a cost of suf- 
fering, expense and experience; it is an investment of 
civilization resting on years of development; it em- 
bodies the results of centuries of evolution and it is 
being wasted more hopelessly than the maddest spend- 
thrift squanders his patrimony. It is difficult for a 
man whose point of view towards living things is ef- 
fected by countless generations imbued with the de- 
sire to kill and the lust for battle, to look upon this 
frightful carnage and realize the waste from the point 
of view of a woman. 

Says Olive Schreiner in the "Century" : 

"There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have 
borne children, or be merely potentially a child-bearer, 
who could look down upon a battlefield covered with 
slain, but the thought would arise in her, 'So many 
mothers' sons ! So many young bodies brought into 



44 HYPHENATIONS 

the world to lie there ! So many months of weariness 
and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within ! 
So many hours of anguish and struggle that breath 
might be! So many baby mouths drawing life at 
women's breasts; — all this, that men might lie with 
glazed eyeballs, and swollen faces, and fixed, blue, 
unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed — this, that an 
acre of ground might be manured with human flesh, 
that next year's grass or poppies or karoo bushes may 
spring up greater and redder, where they have lain, or 
that the sand of a plain may have a glint of white 
bones !' And we cry, 'without an inexorable cause this 
must not be !' No woman who is a woman says of a 
human body, 'It's nothing !' " 

I confess to a belief that woman should have a direct 
voice in the control of affairs. The producer should 
have a say in the thing he or she produces. Woman 
produces human life and war destroys it. If woman 
had a larger voice in the council of nations there would 
be no dictate, there would be no shibboleth, no war 
slogan, no dream or necessity of empire which could 
lead her into the sacrifice of that life of which she and 
she alone knows the real cost. 

We need not urge women to pray for peace; their 
souls cry out in anguish at the thought of war. It is 
rather to us men that the proclamation of our Presi- 
dent is issued. This war arouses in us such great 
emotions that we are inclined to overlook the voice of 
humanity. So in a spirit of meekness let us pray not 
only for peace but "also to this end that He forgive 
us our sins, our ignorance of His holy will, our will- 



HYPHENATIONS 45 

fulness and many errors, and lead us in the paths of 
obedience to places of vision and to thoughts and coun- 
sels that purge and make wise." 

HARVARD AMERICANISM. 

Under recent date Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President 
Emeritus of Harvard University, in a letter to the 
Times, gives an able exposition of the point of view 
of those Americans whose sympathies are confined to 
the cause of the Allies and who are grieved by the 
misconduct of Germany and Austria. I say "grieved," 
because they all take great pains to emphasize their 
admiration for the achievements of the Germanic peo- 
ple and defend their present renunciation of sympathy 
with Germany on the ground that after forty years of 
unparalleled development in the arts and sciences the 
nation has, in an hour as it were, thrown away the 
ideals of the past and gone off after the false gods of 
bloodlust and conquest. 

The claim of Dr. Eliot to an audience on almost any 
subject of abstract thought is recognized. In dealing 
with concrete facts, however, he has not shown, in the 
letter under reference, equal ability or openness of 
mind. As a foremost thinker of a neutral nation, 
writing for a neutral reading public, a greater distinc- 
tion between "American sympathies" and his own 
sympathies might rightly be expected from Dr. Eliot's 
pen. A greater importance might equally well have 
been given to things as they are and not as the sen- 
timentalist would have them. 



46 HYPHENATIONS 

Affirming the "immense obligations under which 
Germany has placed all the rest of the world," Dr. 
Eliot now feels "that the German nation has been go- 
ing wrong in theoretical and practical politics for more 
than ioo years and is to-day reaping the consequences 
of her own wrong-thinking and wrong-doing." 

It is very hard to take these conclusions of the emin- 
ent Doctor seriously. They are neither derived logical- 
ly from his premises nor defensible by comparison with 
the political history of other countries in Europe during 
the last century. Only the great respect which I en- 
tertain for Dr. Eliot's accomplishments restrains me 
from dismissing them without comment. 

The "political and social history of the American 
people and its governmental philosophy and practice" is 
the standard by which Dr. Eliot judges Germany. In 
this test Germany, from the point of view of Dr. Eliot, 
is found wanting. I do not question the propriety of 
such a comparison nor the justness of Dr. Eliot's judg- 
ment in the premises. The point I wish to make is 
this : Why should Germany alone, of the eight powers 
now engaged in this world war, be measured by this 
standard ? Why should her departure from our meth- 
ods of government and lines of thought alone be pro- 
claimed to the American people and the inference given 
that her enemies are one with ourselves in these things ? 
The same argument would condemn France and Rus- 
sia, England, Servia, Belgium and Japan. They have 
all differed from our standards; four of them more 
than Germany, two of them not less. They have all 
"been going wrong" these hundred years and must 



HYPHENATIONS 47 

now be "reaping the consequences," if we are to carry 
Dr. Eliot's reasoning to its logical conclusion. If I 
may presume for myself some right to an opinion on 
the world's history, I would not say that Germany has 
been "wrong-thinking and wrong-doing for over ioo 
years." I would not even allow my sympathy with 
German ideals and their concrete attainments to lead 
me into saying that any one of her present armed foes 
had been doing so. They have all differed from us, 
but they have all differed one from another; they have 
all made mistakes, and so have we; and they are all 
striving, each according to the light that has been given 
them, for the same end. It is ungenerous and unfair 
to single out Germany and attempt to make her sup- 
port a blame which should attach to all Europe. 

Dr. Eliot goes into great detail to show the "many 
important matters concerning which American sym- 
pathy is strongly with Germany" and his presentation 
of such points is masterly. The value of his tributes 
to German greatness is lessened, however, by the sus- 
picion that he has advanced them only to safeguard his 
reputation for fairness, and to lend strength to his sub- 
sequent arraignment of the Germany of to-day. "The 
German practices which do not conform to American 
standards in the conduct of public affairs" are enum- 
erated in seven paragraphs, and I will take them up 
seriatim. 

A. The objection is to "Germany's permanent ex- 
ecutive and secret diplomacy." As an American, I 
say: "Objection sustained." I would extend it, how- 
ever, to cover England, Russia, Servia, Belgium, Japan 



48 HYPHENATIONS 

and France, the executives of the first five of which 
are quite as permanent as that of Germany, unless we 
make allowance for Russian anarchy and Servian 
regicide, and the "secret diplomacy" of all of which 
has shown itself far more dangerous to the peace of 
Europe than that of Berlin. 

B. The objection is to Germany's mobilization by 
executive order. Again, as an American, I say: "Ob- 
jection sustained.'' I would ask Dr. Eliot, however, 
what about Russia and Japan? Were their armies 
mobilized and their fleets assembled by order of Duma 
and Diet? What of England's "warlike preparations" 
five days before war was declared? Where were the 
Deputies when President Poincare ordered the French 
mobilization on the strength of a Cabinet consultation ? 

C. The objection, in greater detail, is to the "sec- 
recy of European diplomatic intercourse and of inter- 
national understandings and terms of alliance in 
Europe." Again, as an American, I say: "Objection 
sustained." But is it not true that so far as we can 
judge from the facts that have been made public, Eng- 
land at the outbreak of the present war had more secret 
alliances than any other country in the world? And 
is it not equally true that so far as we know Germany 
and Austria were the only countries in Europe which 
had none? The terms of the Triple Alliance and of the 
Austro-German Alliance had been public property for 
years. On the other hand, Sir Edward Grey was com- 
pelled to acknowledge before Parliament that he had 
entered into undertakings with France unknown to 
that body. On more occasions than one in previous 



HYPHENATIONS 49 

years he had made technical denial of the existence of 
the web of diplomatic intrigue which he had silently 
and secretly woven about the English people. 

D. The objection is to "German reliance on military 
force as the foundation of true national greatness." If 
the implication could be defended, I would say again, 
as an American: "Objection sustained." But it can- 
not b'e. Dr. Eliot has been reading too much of Conan 
Doyle, H. G. Wells and Anthony Hope and the privi- 
lege had not been his at the time he wrote to see 
Viscount Bryce's frank dismissal of Bernhardi as a 
spokesman for Germany. The German people have 
suffered from militarism, and no one realizes it more 
than they themselves, but they have suffered not from 
choice but from necessity. Surrounded by armed foes, 
what could Germany do but arm herself? And after 
all, who has suffered most? A large percentage of 
the male population of Germany have had to do from 
one to two years of army service, a large percentage 
of the males in Russia have to do from two to four 
years similar service, and in France the same per- 
centage has been forced to three years of service. Eng- 
land alone has escaped from excessive armament on 
land — and has paid for it by maintaining a two-nation 
standard on the water. The "wooden walls" of Eng- 
land have been to her what the "ring of bayonets" has 
been to Germany — an unpleasant necessity, equally 
oppressive. 

E. The objection is to "the extension of national 
territory by force contrary to the wishes of the popu- 
lation concerned." Again, as an American, I say : "Ob- 



50 HYPHENATIONS 

jection sustained" — but I cannot refrain from extend- 
ing to those in the courtroom the privilege of Homeric 
laughter. Will Dr. Eliot tell us in a future letter 
wherein the allusion lies ? Has Germany through forty 
years extended her territory one foot in Europe ? Has 
she in the present conflict of nations given us reason 
to believe that she even desires to do so ? On the other 
hand, is not the one reason for France's entrance into 
the war the ''extension of national territory?" Is it not 
the spirit of the "revanche" — the desire to seize once 
more upon Alsace and Lorraine, that were Germany's 
until she was robbed of them by Louis XIV., that has 
moved France to her disastrous policy ? The best minds 
of England told the world in 1870 that Germany was 
not only to be absolved from the charge of land theft, 
but was to be congratulated upon her decision to re- 
tain these reconquered provinces. I suggest for Dr. 
Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of Universal Learning the 
addition of a few volumes dealing in this connection 
with England in Africa, China and Venezuela, with 
Russia in China and Persia, with Servia in the Balkans, 
and with Japan in Corea and Manchuria. 

F. The objection is "to the violation of treaties for 
no reason whatsoever." Again, as an American, I say : 
"Objection sustained." Perhaps Dr. Eliot refers to the 
"scrap of paper." But to be fair and neutral he should 
have called attention to the Sand River Convention 
and to the Italian scissors which clipped large clauses 
from the Treaty of 1882, on which the Triple Alliance 
was based. He could also have added to his collection 
of paleolithic treaties those conventions for the ob- 



HYPHENATIONS 5U 

servance of the territorial integrity and neutrality of 
China to which both England and her oriental ally 
were parties and which both have now thrown to the 
winds of the East. I do not believe any nation tears 
up a treaty "for no reason whatsoever." Germany 
had the best reason in the world for violating Belgian 
soil and the world is coming to see it. 

G. The objection is to the "German conduct of 
war." I shall not sustain this objection, in view of Dr. 
Eliot's subsequent remark that "all experienced readers 
on this side of the Atlantic are well aware that nine- 
tenths of all the reports they get about the war come 
from English and French sources, and this knowledge 
makes them careful not to form a judgment about de- 
tails." When the London Times and writers of no less 
note than Jerome K. Jerome are warning England not 
to believe all they hear of German atrocities we need 
not on this side of the water give much heed to Bel- 
gian tales of German inhumanity and barbarism. 

I regret that the times have called forth conditions 
which require me to cross pens occasionally with many 
an old friend. But neither Dr. Eliot nor myself nor 
anyone of the other Americans who have been called 
upon to discuss the events now taking place in Europe, 
was given a voice in their making. We are, equally 
with the victims of the war on the Continent, innocent 
sacrifices on an altar erected by others. I would not 
say one word in disparagement of the Doyen of Har- 
vard. I am compelled, however, by a desire not to see 
Germany painted in misconceived color, to ask if all 
he has said of Germany could not have been said with 



52 HYPHENATIONS 

truth of the aggregate of the allies now combined 
against her? If, in other words, what is sauce for the 
goose is not equally good enough to be sauce for the 
gander ? 

EUROPE'S DEATH-GRAPPLE. 

The fighting in Europe has assumed the character of 
a death-grapple. Whatever hopes were held of an 
early solution of the difficulty have been utterly 
blasted. It is becoming each day more evident that it 
is a war of extermination, a war of existence, a 
struggle of national life or national death. The prize 
of victory is world power, the penalty of defeat na- 
tional bankruptcy. 

The struggle lies between Germany and England. It 
is not a matter of a day or month, this competition 
for the chief place in the council of nations, but the 
roots lead back to the forty year clash fought first in 
the commercial markets of the world, and finally on 
the battlefield. Had the English merchant and manu- 
facturer been able to maintain his prestige and business 
against the keen German competition we would not 
now be in the throes of a world war. We heard little 
about the peril of militarism until the peril of business 
rivalry was brought home to John Bull. During the 
first decade of the modern German Empire the aver- 
age export total of $1,250,000,000 did not warrant 
the attention of English diplomacy. During the years, 
however, German industry and German thoroughness 
brought about a remarkable change in the complexion 



HYPHENATIONS 53 

of the commercial situation. The British were be- 
ginning to see the handwriting on the wall. In the 
period immediately preceding the close of the last cen- 
tury German trade developed with extraordinary ra- 
pidity. In the year 1897 the London "Saturday Re- 
view" editorially expressed the view that the war be- 
tween England and Germany was inevitable. Nations 
had fought for centuries over single cities, why not 
over the millions at stake in a commercial war? If 
Germany were to be annihilated to-morrow there 
would not be a single Englishman the following day 
who would not be the richer for it. England is the 
only world power that can attack Germany without 
risk to herself and with certainty of success. When 
England has finished her task she will say to France 
and Russia: Take what compensation you can find 
from Germany, you can have it. As Cato was accust- 
omed to conclude his speeches in the Roman senate to 
the effect that Carthage must be destroyed, so the 
"Saturday Review" closed its attack on Germany with 
the words, "Germaniam esse delendam." 

This principle has become a part of the political 
creed of English statesmen during the last twenty years. 
Public opinion has been formed about it, public policy 
directed by it. 

When Germany demanded from France during the 
Morocco crisis compensation in Central Africa for her 
withdrawal of her Moroccan interests France turned to 
England for help in case of war. Britain was ready 
to land an army of 160,000 men at Antwerp for the 
purpose of operating against the right flank of a Ger- 



54 HYPHENATIONS 

man army invading France. As a matter of fact, dur- 
ing the early days of the present war, England re- 
quested the permission of Holland for the passage of 
British troops through Flushing to Antwerp. Holland 
rejected the demand, observing that it was thoroughly 
inconsistent to protect the neutrality of Belgium by 
violating that of Holland. 

After the Morocco crisis England adopted for a 
while an attitude of pretended friendship designed to 
lull Germany into a feeling of security. Two arrange- 
ments were undertaken between London and Berlin : 
one with regard to the Bagdad Railway and the Far 
East and the other for the settlement of the colonial 
question in Africa. Simultaneously with the second 
of these agreement, which expressed the spirit of 
friendship between the two great powers, England was 
shipping to French fortresses ammunition supplies for 
English artillery to be used in the event of a European 
war. Such an ammunition depot was Maubeuge, the 
French fortress on the Belgian border. The purpose 
undoubtedly behind this move as far as it relates to 
this particular fortress was to use it as a base for the 
operations of an English army through Belgium against 
the Germans. It throws a side light on the English 
attitude towards Belgian neutrality years before the 
war had started. 

The relations between England and Germany became 
strained only when Germany grew great in the fields 
where England was wont to be great alone. Had Ger- 
many relied upon the grace of London for the defence 
of her colonial and maritime interests and not upon 



HYPHENATIONS 55 

a strong fleet, there might have been some method 
found for adjusting the difficulties. England has deter- 
mined to rule the seas for all time against all nations. 
Germany committed the fault of aspiring to commer- 
cial greatness, and then the most unpardonable sin of 
building a great navy to protect those interests. The 
naval power of Spain and France was crushed when 
they interfered with the commercial aims of England. 
Germany must be punished because she has not read 
aright English history. 

Ramsay McDonald, the leader of the labor party 
in England, says in the "Labour Leader": "Grey's 
policy is a misfortune for England; during the last 
eight years it has meant nothing but a continuous 
menace to the peace of Europe. Since 1906 Grey had 
been so deeply engaged in military arrangements, first 
with France, then with Russia, that he was no longer 
able to withdraw. His plans for military action were 
founded upon the basis that Belgium's neutrality must 
be respected. For that reason he refused to negotiate 
with the German ambassador concerning the question 
of the neutrality of England. Belgium was the pre- 
text with him to drive England into war." 

The day may not be so far distant when we, too, shall 
seek an outlet for our manufactures in the markets of 
the world. The moment we reach out for commercial 
triumphs we can expect to meet the hostility of Eng- 
land. Britain will then find some flaw in our national 
life, either militarism or the lack of it. As a defen- 
der of liberty and the small nations she will wage war 
against us until our merchant marine shall be swept 



56 HYPHENATIONS 

from the seas, our navy bottled up in our harbors and 
our dreams of mercantile expansion utterly destroyed. 
Britain will make war "for liberty" unto the end. In- 
cidentally, it takes time to supplant the Germans with 
English goods, to restore the markets to English mer- 
chants and turn back the course of exchange to Lon- 
don. When that shall have been accomplished the 
cause of liberty and the small nations can jolly well 
take care of itself until it will furnish a pretext for 
some other time. 

YAP AND NIP. 

The seizure by a Japanese naval force of the Island 
of Yap in the German Carolines is not an important 
achievement of war. It is true that Yap was a station 
for the German cable to Berlin through the Java seas 
and was also equipped with a powerful wireless 
establishment. But as a German naval base it did not 
justify its purchase price. Its one harbor can be en- 
tered only by a serpentine through dangerous coral 
reefs and is in other ways impracticable for naval uses. 
As a part of the German Empire, therefore, its value 
was not great and its loss infinitesimal. The sig- 
nificance of its seizure by Japan it not to be minimized, 
however, and of all the nations of the world the United 
States should take the keenest interest and ponder 
deepest on the fact. The blow delivered at Yap was 
not dealt to Germany but to the United States. It is 
the insertion of the Japanese wedge into the control 
of the chain of islands across the Pacific which con- 



HYPHENATIONS 57 

stitute the stepping stones of our advent to and the 
bases of our defence of the Philippines. It will not 
be long before the wedge is driven home. 

Our possessions in the Pacific are Hawaii, Midway 
Island, Guam, Samoa, and the Philippines. Of these, 
Japan wants the Philippines and Hawaii and in order 
to accomplish her designs on them the possession of 
the others is essential. In each case these smaller but 
still vitally important bases were "boxed" by a German 
possession. So long as the latter remained in Ger- 
man hands they were a protection rather than a 
menace to our interests in the Pacific. For Germany 
could never pretend to a dominancy in that Ocean. 
Once they are transferred to Japan the exact opposite 
is the case. The Pacific is destined to be either an 
American or an Asiatic sea, and Japan has taken the 
first step toward making it the latter. 

As I have said, Yap is without intrinsic importance. 
Its occupation by the Japanese, however, is a distinct 
menace to our own possessions and promises further 
aggression against American supremacy in the Pacific. 
It is idle for Japan to characterize it as an act of tem- 
porary military necessity. Yap once Japanese will re- 
main Japanese. It will be remembered that when Japan 
declared war on Germany she undertook to confine her 
operations to East Asian waters and that in this un- 
dertaking she was bonded by England. The necessity 
for allaying the apprehensions in this country as to 
the intentions of Japan was readily understood by her 
ally. The London Daily News, in discussing the sub- 
ject on August 24th, said : 



58 HYPHENATIONS 

"The immediate gravity of Japan's entrance into the 
war is its moral effect on American public opinion. 
Assuming that Japanese action is not limited, according 
to her pledges, no sensible American will hold Eng- 
land to blame for an event she is quite powerless to 
prevent. The British government ought to use its 
influence to restrain within strict limits the forward 
policy of Japan." 

The Japanese undertaking, so plausibly given by 
Tokio and so readily seconded by London, has now 
been violated. Japan has repeatedly told us that she 
never fails to keep her pledge, but evidently there is 
no reason for believing that the standards of the 
yellow race are in any way superior to the white. Her 
word is no better than that of her allies. Shall we 
allow her to add insult to injury by further explana- 
tions and undertakings ? Her leaders are loud in their 
protestations of friendship for the United States, but 
their acts belie their words. 

"The people of the United States have learned in 
the school of experience to what extent the relations 
of states to each other depend not upon sentiment nor 
principle, but upon selfish interests." 

These words of Richard Olney were addressed to 
England, but apply to-day with equal force to Japan. 

The motives which prompted Japan to enter the war 
will be written in deeds — not words. It would be too 
much to expect of any Asiatic people that it should 
come out frankly and admit its intentions. But Kiao- 
chow is far too small a candle for the game she is 
playing. She may attempt to cloak her aspirations by 



HYPHENATIONS 59 

advancing her "old enmity for Germany," but the pre- 
tence is too thin. The decision of Japan to join Eng- 
land was not by any means unanimous in the beginning 
on the part either of the Elder Statesmen or of the 
people. It was the desire not to be left out of a row 
in which she had so much to gain, that really brought 
Japan into the conflict. As soon as England declared 
war on Germany, Japan rushed her own mobilization, 
but it took some time for England to swallow the pill 
which she had purchased with the Japanese alliance 
and admit her off-color and no longer clearly necessary 
or even desirable friend to the party. A cessation of 
Japanese military activities was suddenly observable, 
and it took extended negotiations to convince the 
British Government of Japan's right to come to Eng- 
land's aid. I do not mean to insinuate that Sir Edward 
Grey had any feelings of compunction in the matter of 
turning Japan loose upon Germany, but the "moral 
support" of the United States, for which England has 
become so suddenly solicitous, stood in danger of im- 
pairment. So, too, the "moral support" of China, 
Western Canada and Australia. It was diplomacy of 
a high order, which could not but add further lustre 
to the achievements of that arch-diplomat, Sir Edward 
Grey, that humbled Japan to the undertaking neces- 
sary to allay the suspicions of the United States. But 
the ease with which Japan has departed from her 
pledge may be taken as throwing new light upon the 
value of England's secret diplomacy to anyone but 
England — and her allies. 

I appreciate the many admirable qualities of the 



60 HYPHENATIONS 

Japanese people, but this appreciation does not require 
me to overlook the aspirations of the Japanese nation 
in the remote or immediate future. I have a great 
many friends who have lived among the Japanese and 
know them thoroughly. And I have yet to find the 
American, the German or the Britisher who has so 
lived among them and is entitled to speak of their 
history and diplomacy, who does not see in their pre- 
sent activity in the Pacific a direct menace to this 
country. The embargo on the discussion of Japanese 
matters which has obtained in Washington since the 
enactment of the Californian Alien Land Law has 
done much good, perhaps, but it has also done its 
harm. It has left the field open for the fine Roman 
hand of the Japanese press agency in this country to 
get in its work. The embargo did not, however, pre- 
vent a reporter of the Herald wiring to his paper on 
August 18th, as follows: 

"The remarkable thing about it is that condemna- 
tion of Japan's action is heard everywhere in Congress. 
It comes from Northerners, Westerners, Southerners 
and Easterners. Out of several dozens of Representa- 
tives and Senators approached on this subject a Herald 
reporter found not a single one who had anything to 
offer in favor of Japan, while all united in expressions 
of strong anti-Japanese sentiments." 

I put little faith from the beginning in the pledge of 
Japan to confine her operations to her own immediate 
neighborhood and now that she has violated that 
pledge, I can put still less faith in her promises in re- 
gard to the surrender of Yap. Nor did I believe in 



HYPHENATIONS 61 

either the sincerity of England when she guaranteed 
Japan's undertaking or in her ability to carry out the 
guarantee. It appears I was not far wrong. And look- 
ing forward a few years I can see the inevitable casus 
belli between Japan and the United States arise, the 
subjugation of Hawaii and the Philippines and the ex- 
penditure of untold lives to regain them, and all this 
because we have allowed the hollow prattle of Eng- 
land and Japan to convince us that we have nothing to 
fear from them. It is time that we judged others not 
by our standards but by their own. 

BELGIUM'S GREY BOOK. 

The Belgian diplomatic correspondence relating to 
the war has made its appearance. I try to realize, 
when reading any diplomatic correspondence, be it in 
a Blue, Orange, White or Gray Book, that its contents 
are carefully edited and that I am studying briefs ar- 
ranged and presented by the picked intellects of a na- 
tion. It naturally follows that one does not go far 
wrong when taking at their face value such parts of 
these diplomatic documents as are not over favorable 
to the country which has publishel them. 

I have frequently expressed in these columns my 
deep belief in the pacific and non-aggressive spirit of 
the German Government. This belief has been 
strengthened every time additional documents bearing 
on the European cataclysm have been published. The 
authors of the German brief certainly had little diffi- 
culty in presenting Germany's pacific aims clearly to 



62 HYPHENATIONS 

the world ; and as I have had occasion to point out re- 
peatedly, England's brief contains many dispatches 
testifying to the supreme effort of the German Govern- 
ment to safeguard Europe's peace. As to the Russian 
Orange Book, an analysis which appeared in the 
London "Economist" of September 12th, and is all the 
more curious coming as it does from an organ of Rus- 
sia's ally, is worthy of notice. I quote from it as 
follow : 

"The reason for the Russian mobilization is some- 
what surprising. According to the Orange Book, the 
general mobilization orders were signed in Austria on 
July 28th, whereas, according to Baron de Bunsen, our 
Ambassador in Vienna (White Paper No. 127), gen- 
eral mobilization in Austria was ordered on August 
1st. Since the necessity for the Russian mobilization 
was based on the Austrian mobilization and since the 
general Russian mobilization was the direct cause of 
the German mobilization . . ., which made war inevi- 
table, it would seem to be important that this point 
should be cleared up. A further telegram in the Orange 
Book, from Berlin, describing the issue of German 
mobilization orders sometime before it actually took 
place, suggests that the Russian envoys were occasion- 
ally mistaken in their information." 

We must wait patiently for the explanation demand- 
ed by the "Economist" — but may we not in the mean- 
time derive a bit of satisfaction from such an authori- 
tative English attack on the infallibility of the Russian 
Government and its members? It remained, however, 
for Belgium to give in its official papers the most 



HYPHENATIONS 63 

sweeping endorsement of the conciliatory attitude of 
the German Government which I have discovered in all 
the state documents I have come upon. 

This is her testimony : 

Mr. De L'Escalle, the Belgian Charge at St. Peters- 
burg, writing under date of July 30th to Brussels, made 
an extensive report on the state of affairs and on the 
diplomatic atmosphere in the Russian capital. These 
in part were his words : 

"The days of yesterday and to-day have been spent 
in the waiting for events that must follow the declara- 
tion of war by Austria-Hungary upon Servia. What 
is incontestable is, that Germany has striven here, as 
well as at Vienna, to find some means of avoiding a 
general conflict. 

"This morning, an official communique to the news- 
papers announces that the reserves have been called 
under arms in a certain number of Governments. 
Knowing the discreet nature of the official com- 
muniques, one can, without fear, assert that mobili- 
zation is going on everywhere. 

"England began by allowing it to be understood that 
she did not zvant to be drawn into a conflict. Sir George 
Buchanan {British Ambassador) said that openly. To- 
day one is firmly convinced at St. Petersburg — one has 
even the assurance of it — that England will support 
France. This support is of enormous weight, and has 
contributed not a little to give the upper hand to the 
war party." 

On August 2nd, the German Government handed to 
Belgium the well-known note stating that it felt itself 



64 HYPHENATIONS 

under the obligation to prevent a French attack through 
Belgium and guaranteeing the integrity of the kingdom 
and its possessions in return for a friendly attitude. 
The Belgian reply and its immediate consequence — 
the storming of Liege — are now familiar matters of 
history. The Belgian correspondence contains a won- 
derful endorsement not only of the pacific desires of 
the German Government but also of its non-aggressive 
spirit. 

Germany has been accused in the present imbroglio 
of the lusting to conquer and of recklessly and greedily 
seizing the opportunity for conquest. On the 9th of 
August, however, after Liege had fallen and after Ger- 
many — bent on conquest, if we are to believe her ene- 
mies, — had apparently burned her bridges behind her, 
the Belgian Government, according to its own Gray 
Book, received a further German offer in the following 
terms: 

"The fortress of Liege has been taken by assault 
after a courageous defense. The German Government 
regrets that such bloody encounters should have oc- 
curred. It is only by reason of the military measures 
of France, that it has been forced to take the grave 
determination of entering Belgium and of occupying 
Liege as a base for her further military operations. 
Now, that the Belgian army has in heroic resistance 
against great superiority maintained the honor of its 
arms in the most brilliant fashion, the German Gov- 
ernment prays his Majesty the King and the Belgian 
Government to avert from Belgium the further hor- 
rors of war. The German Government is ready for 



HYPHENATIONS 65 

any agreement with Belgium. Once more Germany 
offers her solemn assurance, that she has not been 
actuated by any intention to appropriate Belgian terri- 
tory and that such intention is far from her." 

Could anything have been less aggressive than the 
spirit of this offer? 

But the pride of Belgium had been stung to the quick 
and it was left to her only to fight on in her almost un- 
aided battle. 

I fancy that more has been said on the subject of the 
violation of Belgian neutrality than on any other topic 
of the war. I have myself called attention to a number 
of dispatches in the British "White Papers" which go 
far to exonerate Germany from the accusation of hav- 
ing proceeded ruthlessly. I have stated my belief that 
any country, faced by similar conditions, would have 
acted as Germany did. But until I read the Belgian 
Gray Book, I had not seen the statement of the French 
Minister at Brussels of July 31st that the French Gov- 
ernment, in order "to safeguard its own defense," 
might modify its attitude in regard to Belgian neutral- 
ity. The German Minister at Brussels is quoted, also 
in the Gray Book, in the sense that the German Gov- 
ernment felt itself under obligation "to prevent that 
(French) attack." I believe that the French Govern- 
ment chose the shrewder verbiage. I leave it to my 
readers to decide whether or not there is a difference 
of intent. I add, for the sake of comparison as to 
phrase and spirit, England's position in regard to the 
question as given to the House of Commons by Sir 
Edward Grey on August 3rd, when he quoted approv- 



66 HYPHENATIONS 

ingly Gladstone's address in the same place in 1870, 
the Belgian neutrality treaty being then under discus- 
sion : 

"There is, I admit, the obligation of the treaty. It 
is not necessary, nor would time permit me, to enter 
into the complicated question of the nature of the ob- 
ligation under that treaty. But I am not able to sub- 
scribe to the doctrine of those who have held in this 
house, what plainly amounts to the assertion, that the 
simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is binding 
to every party to it, irrespective altogether of the par- 
ticular position in which it may find itself at the time, 
when the occasion for acting on the question arises. 
The great authorities on foreign policy, to whom I have 
been accustomed to listen, such as Lord Aberdeen and 
Lord Palmerston, never, to my knowledge, took that 
rigid, and, if I may venture to say so, that impracti- 
cable view of the guarantee.'' 

The truth is, and it is plain enough, that no one of 
the three powers which had guaranteed the permanent 
neutrality of Belgium wished to renew or maintain that 
guarantee to its own disadvantage. The vindication 
of Germany from the charges of France and England 
lies not so much, however, in the fact that the other 
two were prepared to do as she has done, as in the 
fact that her interests demanded far more than theirs 
the destruction of the compact and that she acted un- 
der the circumstances as generously as possible. 



HYPHENATIONS 67 

A FAIR JUDGMENT. 

Judge Peter S. Grosscup, of Chicago, to whom I am 
indebted for the following excellent analysis of the 
question of responsibility for the war in Europe, needs 
no introduction to the American people. As a District 
Court Judge for the Northern District of Illinois and 
later as Judge both of the United States Circuit Court 
and Circuit Court of Appeals, he established a reputa- 
tion, equalled b'y few of his contemporaries, for clear- 
cut logic and fearless expression of views. 

The application of sound judicial sense to the points 
involved in the present war has been avoided by Eng- 
land and by her ardent admirers in America for ob- 
vious reasons. I believe, and to some extent because 
this has been the case, that Judge Grosscup's presenta- 
tion and elucidation of these points will be welcomed 
by all open-minded Americans. 



An Appeal for a Fair Judgment. 

The other day I saw a group of men in a lane some 
distance from the road who seemed to be in earnest 
conversation. Suddenly one of the men struck one of 
the others. Instinctively I felt that he was the aggres- 
sor — that he wished a fight. But the facts, had I been 
near enough to see and hear, might have been different. 
That first blow as I saw it may have been in self-de- 
fense ; I was not near enough to see the other's clenched 
fist. It may have been deserved ; I was not near 



68 HYPHENATIONS 

enough to hear the provocation. What is the only thing 
visible to one at a distance may not have been the fact 
at all as seen by those upon the spot. 

American public opinion means to be fair. But we 
in America saw the beginnings of this war only from 
a distance. It looked to us as if Germany struck first. 
Was that the act of an aggressor wishing for a fight, 
or the act of one who believes he was justified in what 
he did? At first I thought Germany the aggressor 
wishing for war. The reading of the English White 
Paper — getting the facts from those near the scene — 
convinces me that the Kaiser and his councillors did 
not do what they have done out of desire for war. And 
while it does not convince me that war was unavoid- 
able, it reveals that responsibilty for it, whether it was 
avoidable or not, is on Russia primarily, and as much 
at least on England and France secondarily as on the 
Kaiser and his councillors. Before going to that, how- 
ever, a couple of collateral considerations must be 
noticed. 

The first of these is : How came it about that Ger- 
many was so ready for war at the moment she declared 
war. Is not ''readiness" an evidence of "desire." Yes 
and No. That depends on other facts — for instance, 
how long has that readiness existed. One ready and 
wishing for war would strike quickly — would not wait 
forty years. Germany has been "ready" for forty- 
three years. Her situation, both on the west and east, 
has compelled her to be always ready. But while with- 
in the last sixteen years of that forty-three England has 
made war on the Transvaal, the United States on 



HYPHENATIONS 69 

Spain, Japan on Russia, and Italy on Turkey, Germany, 
always ready, has remained at peace. Does that count 
for nothing in the inquiry of whether "readiness" is 
evidence of "desire?" The Kaiser came to the throne 
in his twenties; he is now in his fifties; during that 
period, usually the fighting period in a man's life, he 
has not sent a German soldier against an enemy; of 
the million soldiers in the field to-day the German army 
alone is without a private soldier who has ever before 
seen actual service in battle. Does that count for 
nothing. Who can believe, satisfactorily to himself, 
that readiness of that kind is evidence of desire. 

The second of these collateral matters is : How came 
it about that Germany invaded Belgium if she did not 
desire war. The White Paper shows that Germany 
told England she would not mobilize against France 
if England would assure the neutrality of France in 
Germany's affair with Russia. That shows she was 
not seeking war even with France her old enemy, much 
less with little Belgium that lay between them. The 
White Paper shows also that Germany asked England 
if she (England) would remain neutral if Germany, 
in the event of war with France, would stay out of 
Belgium. England professed to treat this as the offer 
of a bribe and declined to commit herself. The White 
Paper shows also that when Germany could get none 
of these assurances she asked for peaceful transit 
across the Belgian territory, offering to compensate 
for any losses that might follow. This Belgium refused. 
One other fact in this connection — the geography of 
the country. A look at that will show that for Ger- 



70 HYPHENATIONS 

many to swing her forces solely on the southerly bend 
through Alsace and Lorraine would leave her northern 
flank at the mercy of a northern army from either 
England or France. To keep out of Belgium, there- 
fore, with England a possible enemy, would have been 
military madness. Now with all these facts in mind 
what was, not the technical but the moral obligation 
of Germany to Belgium. By going across Belgium she 
was not forcing war on Belgium ; for although Belgium 
was under no duty to Germany to grant her transit, 
she was under no duty to England or France to resist 
it by force. She could have remained neutral by re- 
maining passive, while Japan, called out b'y England, 
is going across her territory toward Germany's Chinese 
port, China has not given permission; she protests; 
but no one believes, much less anyone in England, that 
as a neutral she is obliged to take up arms against the 
country whose army is crossing. Indeed Belgium's 
right not to be molested, even by troops in transit, was 
not that of "guaranteed neutrality" at all, resting on 
treaty, but of territorial inviolability, resting on the fact 
that she was an independent nation — the same right 
that I have to exclude you from my house, not because 
you have agreed with someone else, to let me alone, but 
because the law gives me the right, on my own account, 
to be let alone. 

But suppose, in pursuit of one who has attacked you 
or is about to attack you, you go through my house, 
that being the only way you can effectually overtake 
him. However technically it may be a trespass, will 
the law look upon it as a moral wrong. Some abstract 



HYPHENATIONS 71 

rights have to yield, on occasion, to greater concrete 
needs. Whether Germany was morally right in attack- 
ing France is one question ; her military necessities, in 
case she was morally right in the attack, is another and 
a different question. And that public opinion lacks 
all sense of proportion which holds, that however mor- 
ally right the attack on France may have been, and 
whatever the necessity of going across Belgium, there 
is a moral wrong in trespassing on Belgium's abstract 
right of territorial inviolability — compensation being- 
guaranteed. At least, except as an excuse, no nation 
yet has made it a cause for war. As for France, as- 
suming again that Germany was right in striking her, 
her mouth is closed against complaining of the viola- 
tion of the treaty by the fact that she provoked it. And 
England, in declining to say whether she would be a 
belligerent or not, is in the same posture. As pretend- 
ed guardians of Belgium they cannot provoke an at- 
tack and then fend it off by holding up their ward 
between them and the blows that follow; so that as a 
moral question, this occupation by Germany of Bel- 
gian soil for the purpose of transit, is merged in the 
larger moral question: Was Germany right in her at- 
tack on France — did she honestly believe that her se- 
curity and honor required that that attack should be 
made ? 

Though the White Paper covers five pages of the 
American newspaper in which I found it, the essential 
facts pertinent to this larger question are few and can 
be compactly stated. The first of these — trite enough 
but never to be lost sight of — is that the Austro-Hun- 



72 HYPHENATIONS 

garian monarchy contains a very large Slav population 
— the race of the Servians also — some of it added in 
recent years. This constituted, to say the least, a high- 
ly inflammable anti-Austrian material to anyone dis- 
posed to start a fire within the Austro-Hungarian 
boundaries. Another fact — not so trite but equally im- 
portant — is that Servia has been systematically distrib 
uting firebrands throughout this inflammable matter. 
"It was a subversive movement," says the Austrian 
Foreign Minister in one of the dispatches constituting 
the White Paper, "intended to detach from Austria a 
part of her empire, carried on by organized societies 
in Servia, to which Servian high officials, including 
ministers, generals and judges, belonged, and resulting 
in the assassination of the heir to the throne and his 
wife," not as the individual mad deed of a Guiteau or 
a Czolgosz, we might add, but of "an organized propa- 
ganda and conspiracy" that developed itself in several 
attempts, at several unconnected points, by several per- 
sons, on the same day; a statement of the Servian atti- 
tude nowhere denied in this English White Paper, 
either in the London Foreign Office or the Embassies at 
Paris or St. Petersburg. On the contrary Sir Edward 
Grey says he cannot help but look with sympathy on 
the basis of the Austro-Hungarian complaint. And 
Servia herself practically admits the truth of it, in her 
reply to the Austrian ultimatum, for though she calls 
whatever agitation took place "political"— that is to 
say, something whose object is the change of govern- 
ment and not private murder — she offers to dissolve 
the Narodna Odbrana, a revolutionary society, and 



HYPHENATIONS 1% 

every society which may be "directing its efforts 
against Austria-Hungary ;" to introduce a law provid- 
ing for the most severe punishment of "publications 
calculated to incite hatred against the territorial in- 
tegrity of Austria;" to remove from the "public educa- 
tional establishments" in Servia everything calculated 
to foment propaganda against Austria ; and to remove 
from military service all such persons as judicial en- 
quiry may have proved to be guilty of acts directed 
against the integrity of the territory of Austria-Hun- 
gary — promises no people would make unless there 
was a basis of fact for the complaint. 

But though Servia thus acknowledged the basis of 
the complaint, and promised to take measures to reme- 
dy it, she refused the "collaboration" of Austrian re- 
presentatives, or the participation of Austrian "dele- 
gates," in the investigations relating thereto. She made 
no straight out denial of the subversive movements al- 
leged. The most that can be made of her answer is 
that she neither admits nor denies, but simply calls 
for the proofs. But she refused the presence of Aus- 
tria at the taking of the proofs. In a word, as Austria 
viewed it, should the promised investigation be a white- 
wash, or should it be a sincere effort to locate respon- 
sibility? Austria wanted a sincere investigation — the 
attitude of Servia looks as if she wanted a white-wash. 
And it was on that that the two countries broke. 

Now was Austria-Hungary right in making the de- 
mand and Servia wrong in refusing the demand, that 
Austrian delegates sit in at the investigation. That is 
the crux of the matter as a question between Austria 



74 HYPHENATIONS 

and Servia. The conduct of nations, like that of in- 
dividuals, must stand the test of common sense. And 
like individuals, nations have the right to have their 
word taken in matters of this kind until their word is 
no longer good, by being repeatedly broken; so that 
had this been the first complaint by Austria against 
Servia on this matter, and this Servia's first promise 
to live hereafter on friendly relations, there would have 
been no justification for Austria's demand, or for her 
refusal to take Servia's word that a fair investigation 
would be made and the guilty punished. But this White 
Paper shows that this was not Servia's first promise 
— that she had made former promises — that this new 
offer of her word was the offer of an already broken 
word. This is the third fact in the enquiry — the turn- 
ing fact in the question of who was wrong and who 
was right — a fact entirely ignored in the views pressed 
upon American public opinion. Five years before, 
March 18, 1909, Servia gave her word, not to Austria 
alone, but to the Great Powers, that this scattering of 
firebands should cease — that thereafter she would live 
as a friendly neighbor. That shows that five years be- 
fore the offense was already in existence. Did it cease ? 
Was the word kept? In the note communicated to 
Sir Edward Grey by the German Ambassador July 
24th, 1914 — a note that called out from Sir 
Edward, not a denial, but an expression of sympathy 
— the German Ambassador, referring to that earlier 
promise says, "It was only owing to the far-reaching 
self-restraint and moderation of the Austro-Hungar- 
ian Government, and to the energetic interference of 



HYPHENATIONS 75 

the Great Powers, that the Servian provocation to 
which Austria-Hungary was then (March, 1909) ex- 
posed did not lead to a conflict. The assurance of good 
conduct in the future which was then given b'y the Ser- 
vian government has not been kept. Under the eyes, 
at least with the tacit permission of official Servia, the 
great Servian propaganda has continuously increased 
in extension and intensity ; to its account must be set 
the recent crime the threads of which lead to Bel- 
grade ;" an indictment that none of the Powers so much 
as question— neither the Foreign Offices nor Embassies 
of Russia, England or France— and to which Servia 
practically pleads guilty in her answer to the Austrian 
ultimatum already stated. 

Now in view of this, what was Austria-Hungary to 
do? Accept the word of Servia again ? We must look 
at it not from the standpoint of those who think the 
Austro-Hungarian government ought to be destroyed, 
but from the standpoint of Austria-Hungary herself. 
What would we of America do, if despite a solemn 
promise to desist, some neighboring nation continued 
to stir up racial revolution among our people— say 
Spain among the Porto Ricans or Philippines? Would 
we accept that nation's word again? It is a just and 
generous nature that accepts the offender's word on 
the first offense, but a foolish or craven nature that 
continues to accept it through repetitions of the of- 
fense. Let us not lose sight of the practical side of 
the problem as presented to Austria. The spirit be- 
hind these attacks on Austria-Hungary was not the 
spirit of the Servian Government only but the 



76 HYPHENATIONS 

spirit of the Servian people also. A government may 
be reached sometimes by protest. But there are cases 
in which a people can only be reached by some tangible 
military demonstration. History is replete with de- 
monstrations of that kind ; so that the problem of Aus- 
tria, now that the government's word could no longer 
be taken, was to impress the people of Servia with 
Austria-Hungary's purpose not to be silent longer un- 
der these flying firebands. We went to war with Spain 
for less than Austria was suffering at the hands of 
Servia. England declared war on the republic of Paul 
Kruger for less. And Italy declared war on Turkey 
for less. And in each case the war closed with terri- 
tory detached from the vanquished and taken by th 
victor. Were we wrong? More than that: Did any 
great outside Power even say Nay? On the contrary 
we were left to deal with the problem as we thought 
right. Why, then, should any outside Power say Nay 
to Austria, especially if no territory was to be taken? 
Morally right in her demand on Servia, to sit in at the 
investigation, why was not Austria left alone to en- 
force that right, as England, the United States, and 
Italy had been left to enforce their rights? 

The answer is — Russia. And that, too, not because 
Austria was without just cause for what she proposed, 
but because any movement against the Slavs of Servia 
would not be tolerated by "home opinion" in Russia. 
That is the fourth salient fact contained in the White 
Paper. Had Russia stood aside as England was wil- 
ling to stand aside, except to see that the demonstration 
against Servia was not carried too far, the flame would 



HYPHENATIONS 77 

not have spread to Europe. England had no interest in 
it, as an "Austro-Servian question;" so Sir Edward 
Grey expressly declared. France's interest was merely 
that of ally of Russia — it was put on that ground at the 
time by the French Foreign Office ; so it was Russia's 
interference, and Russia's interference alone, that blew 
the flame from a matter concerning Austria and Servia 
only, to a matter involving Europe. And upon the sole 
reason (at least such is the purport of the White Paper) 
that there was a condition of opinion "at home" that 
would not permit her to be tolerant, or even just, in 
such a dispute as this abroad. Group together, in your 
mind, these three facts — the presence of the Slav in 
large numbers in Austro-Hungarian population; the 
systematic stirring of these Slavs by Servia against 
Austria-Hungary, and the persistence of Servia in that, 
even after solemn promises to stop it, both to Austria 
and the Great Powers — and you have staked out the 
cause of the war as an immediate matter between Aus- 
tria and Servia. Add the fourth fact — the determina- 
tion of Russia, for reasons of her own, that no military 
demonstration should be made to stop Servia — and you 
will have the lever that lifted it from an Austro-Ser- 
vian question to a European question. Russia is the 
great Slav country of the world. It is not impossible 
that that great race demanded of its government that 
no Slav anywhere should be punished, even if he were 
stirring up the Slavs of a neighboring nation. It is not 
impossible that Russia, pressed at home by her own 
Slavs for a greater measure of civil liberty, saw in the 
Servian situation a vent for that feeling, by becoming 



78 HYPHENATIONS 

the champion of her race abroad. It is not impossible 
that Russia has designs of her own on the Balkan pen- 
insula, and feared that a demonstration by Austria 
might take the form of acquiring territory. Whatever 
the reason, the spark that has ignited Europe was this 
alleged public opinion in Russia. What subsequently 
transpired was simply the development of that spark. 
Germany tried to drown it out, even in Russia; the 
White Paper shows that on a sharp note from her to 
Austria, Austria stipulated not to take any of Servia's 
territory. Germany tried to prevent its spreading to 
France ; did not want war with France ; the White Pa- 
per shows, as already stated, that she said she would not 
mobilize against France if England would stipulate for 
!• ranee's neutrality. And it is certain Germany did not 
want war with England. Even after England announced 
she would not permit Germany to attack from sea the 
northern coast of France, and asked about the purposes 
of Germany respecting Belgium, Germany suggested 
that if England would remain neutral she would stay 
out of Belgium. But Russia was immovable; she 
would not accept the offered stipulation of Austria 
that territory would not be taken from Servia. Eng- 
land would make no assurances for France; and with 
respect to Belgium, professed to look upon the sugges- 
tion as the offer of a bribe. 

War is hideous. The Kaiser and his father always 
ready, as their situation made it essential they should 
be ready, had for forty-three years averted it. But if 
put in his place, the head of a nation, what could you 
have done? What could Austria and Germany do? 



HYPHENATIONS 79 

Let the Servian Government and the Servian people go 
free, on her own word again? That would be to in- 
vite continued attacks. Servia would have ascribed this 
indulgence to fear of stirring up trouble in Europe. 
Let Russia's interference change this? Servia would 
have known then that their indulgence was due to fear 
— the fear of Russia. Besides there is a national self- 
respect that must be maintained. Germany and Aus- 
tria bowing to the yoke of Russia, on a matter in which 
Germany and Austria were right and Russia wrong, 
would have been Germany and Austria already morally 
vanquished. Even though France and England had 
come at once, and openly, to the side of Russia, could 
Germany and Austria have let the matter go on Servia's 
wrd ? Not unless they were willing to bow their necks 
to the yoke of Europe. The fact that England and 
France joined Russia in putting on the yoke would not 
have alleviated the servility of bearing it. 

But was there no way to escape that yoke without 
war? That is the question history will ask. Without 
war with Russia, no — unless Austria accepted the Rus- 
sian veto on any demonstration against Servia. Rus- 
sia's mind was made up. Austria stipulated not to 
annex Servian territory ; that was not enough ; Russia 
remained immovable. England suggested a conference, 
and pending such conference that Austria be allowed 
to occupy Belgrade. Russia refused. Russia was wil- 
ling that England, Italy, France, and Germany should 
go into conference, but made it clear that pending the 
outcome of such a conference Austria's hands must 
be tied even from making a military demonstration of 



80 HYPHENATIONS 

her determination that the incendiarism should cease. 
Russia's will in the matter must be accepted by Europe 
as well as by Germany and Austria. That was Rus- 
sia's attitude. And it meant to Austria and Germany 
either to bow to that will, or war — with Russia at least. 

Russia undoubtedly believed she had the backing of 
France in this, and possibly of England also. The 
White Paper contains a dispatch showing that the 
French Ambassador at St. Petersburg was urging the 
"solidarity" of Russia, France and England, on the 
English Ambassador there. Now why did France back 
Russia? Why has England come finally to back her, 
for the Belgian matter is only an excuse? On this 
matter between Austria and Russia, Austria was right 
and Russia was wrong. For Austria to have surren- 
dered to the veto of Russia would have meant the sur- 
render of her independence as a great power. Why 
did France (and England finally) virtually insist on 
that surrender? Because of the Triple Entente? No 
ally is bound to support another ally in a wrong. It 
is on that ground that American public opinion is ex- 
cusing Italy from her obligation to Germany. Why 
then did not England and France let Germany, right, 
have it out alone with Russia, wrong? 

There was something else than the Triple Entente. 
Europe the chief seat of civilization is the 
chief seat of the world-old struggle of the 
races also, especially eastern and southeastern Europe ; 
the drawing of the races together by the concentric 
chords of modern life has only intensified that strug- 
gle. Europe also is the seat of the modern struggle of 






HYPHENATIONS 81 

economic ambitions; industry in our day has become 
the affair not of individuals but of nations. But as 
colors released from their anchorage run together, the 
races drawn out of their isolations are merging, and 
industry no longer a matter of small spheres is con- 
centrating into larger and larger spheres ; neither races 
nor economic spheres can be kept separate longer by 
national boundaries. Within the thirty years between 
my first and last visits to Europe this process of things 
becoming alike (including people) has transformed 
Europe from a land of picturesque differences to a 
land resembling America in identity of dress, of men- 
tal attitudes, and of the internal spirit as well as ex- 
ternal appearances of live affairs. That means that 
the day of a larger political concentration is at hand 
also. What led France and England to back Russia, 
wrong, in this Austria-Hungary matter against Ger- 
many, right, was, undoubtedly, their apprehension that 
Germany successful over Russia would be Germany 
not simply pre-eminent, but preponderant, both politi- 
cally and economically, among the nations of the con- 
tinent. 

That apprehension may have been justified by the 
probable fact. The spread of the war to the whole of 
Europe, in consequence, history may justify; I am only 
stating what I believe to be the basic cause. But this 
thing every honest mind must admit: If this was the 
Big Cause, underneath the smaller causes, that brought 
France and England into the struggle, Germany, by 
every law that entitles a nation to honestly grow, was 
entitled to resist them. And if war on one side of this 



82 HYPHENATIONS 

apprehension was something not to be denominated a c 
monstrous, war on the other side is equally above that 
common epithet. It is not impossible of course that 
Germany made a mistake in believing war with Russia, 
or surrender to Russia, was unavoidable, through con- 
ference. Only Omniscience and the Russian Cabinet 
knew. It is not impossible that Germany made a tacti- 
cal mistake — that the participation of England on the 
side of Russia might have been avoided by that con- 
ference. Only Omniscience and the English Cabinet 
knew. And it is not impossible that Germany made a 
mistake as to her own strength, even when ready, 
against her enemies' unreadiness. The event will prove. 
But the duty and the responsibility of balancing these, 
as to whether he would wait for such conference or 
not, was with the Kaiser and his councillors. He knew 
that Germany was ready. And who has the right to 
say, that if war either now or a little later was inevi- 
table — if the attitude of France and England support- 
ing Russia, wrong, against Germany, right, in the Aus- 
tro-Servian matter, revealed their true attitude toward 
the natural growth of Germany in the family of nations 
— who has the right to say in that event that William 
was bound to wait until his own preparations had been 
matched by theirs. I am not unreservedly for Ger- 
many, nor for France or England in this war. There 
is much I do not know that might turn the scale either 
way. But I am for an open mind. The question is 
not : Who struck the first blow ? The question is : Why 
was any blow made necessary? 

Peter 5. Grosscup. 



HYPHENATIONS 83 

I cannot refrain from the observation that Judge 
Grosscup has not only struck, in the article concluded 
above the true note of that higher neutrality enunciated 
by President Wilson, but that he has also given a sound, 
logical and workable interpretation of it. If in the 
beginning all Americans and all American organs of 
publicity had approached the situation in Europe with 
"an open mind" we might have been spared the war 
of words which it has brought down about our ears. 
Attack inspires defense, and as in Europe, Germany 
and Austria were not the aggressors, so in the Ameri- 
can press, it was not those who sympathized with Ger- 
many and Austria who opened hostilities but those who 
insisted upon vilifying them. It is high time that 
"cease firing" were sounded. 

EUROPE'S WAR. 

The war in Europe was of Europe's making. The 
United States was not approached before the declara- 
tion of hostilities on the question of its attitude in the 
circumstances. In one way, therefore, the conflict is 
none of our business. If its effects could have been 
confined to Europe solely it would in no sense have 
been any business of ours. But they could not be, or, 
rather, have not been, and as a consequence we are 
brought to a situation vis-a-vis the belligerent powers 
which demands that we no longer delay a definite 
statement of our position on certain points of policy. 
It- is not necessary to go into those eternal details which 
serve only to confuse and to confound. The facts are 



84 HYPHENATIONS 

that our Atlantic coast has been subjected to a block- 
ade by British cruisers inconsistent alike with our right- 
ful interests as a neutral trading nation and with our 
claims to the privileges of an independent power, and 
that our ships have been seized and carried into for- 
eign ports, our right to peaceful trade disputed, our 
mails interfered with, and our citizens detained, in 
violation of the written laws of war and the unwritten 
principles which underlie the comity of nations. 

The action of Great Britain in these matters is his- 
torically not without precedent. We suffered from 
the same treatment between 1783 and 1814, but were 
of the opinion that the claim of England to the rights 
of search and impressment was definitely settled by 
the War of 1812. Apparently, we were wrong. The 
same claim to absolute and unquestionable dominion 
over the waters of the South was asserted by England 
during the War of the States. And again we thought 
that in the Geneva Award we had secured some con- 
troversion of England's pretensions. But to-day our 
eyes are once more opened to the fact that we have not 
advanced one step in over a century in the fight for the 
freedom of the seas. We are still face to face with 
the cry and claim that "Britannia rules the waves" and 
that whatever transpires thereon is solely a matter for 
the adjudication of British courts. 

The United States fought for years for the rights 
of private property at sea. She fought the battle of 
not only her own people but of the peoples of the 
world. And England alone opposed her. And why? 
Solely because as the dominant naval power of the 



HYPHENATIONS 35 

world it was her interest to do so. Willing enough to 
write into international law all the possible ameliorat- 
ing conditions under which land war was to be waged, 
England has stood out consistently for 18th Century 
principles in the conduct of belligerents on the seas. 
She has reserved to herself, in other words, every 
"right" which could be availed of to maintain her un- 
questioned command of the water-ways of inter- 
national trade. From the Declaration of Paris to the 
Declaration of London the policy which she has stood 
for has uncovered her hand. 

The time has come to call a halt. We have come so 
far under the charm of England's campaign for our 
"moral support" that perhaps it is difficult to see things 
clearly as they are. A blind man could discern, how- 
ever, between England's desires and her deserts. There 
is no reason why we should allot our friendship where 
we receive no return in kind. We are asked to support 
England in her present distress of war and terror, 
morally, and recently we have been called upon for 
support of a more material character: but what have 
we had from her? Injury and insult and nothing else! 

I know that there is a certain element in Boston and 
in Washington, bottle-fed and nipple-nursed by Eng- 
land, that would like to see the Stars and Stripes 
hauled down and the Union Jack floating once more 
from Hudson Bay to Houston, Texas, but does that 
element represent the American people as a whole ? We 
have had Americans in the past who realized that we 
are no longer a colonial appanage of Europe. Have 
we not one to-day ? We have had statesmen who lived 



86 HYPHENATIONS 

and died and fought as Americans, supported by a firm 
faith in our independent sovereignty, and the fact that 
we were big enough and strong enough to assert our 
right to a first place in the family of nations. Have 
we not one now? We have told the powers of Europe 
on more occasions than one that we should regard as 
an unfriendly act precisely what England has done and 
is continuing to do off our coast in the present war. 
Why do we submit to it to-day? 

The answer is at hand. We have passed from the 
school of Clay and Webster, Seward, Fish, Blaine and 
Olney, to a school of psychologists, who see in every 
protest against our re-union with the apron strings of 
England nothing but "mental exercise." We are re- 
presented no longer by men, but by invertebrates. We 
have no longer as our spokesmen officials who speak 
"American," but only such as speak "English." The 
one redeeming excuse of our present Administration 
is that knowing nothing of the merits of the case and 
utterly incapable of sane expression on the subject, it 
has done nothing. Why, however, was the one man 
in all America who could have handled the situation, 
John Bassett Moore, driven from the Service? 

I am not interested in the fact that it is England that 
is attempting to destroy our trade and our prestige be- 
fore the world. I should speak just as plainly if it 
were Germany or Austria, Japan, China or Chile. The 
point to be made is that no nation on God's earth has 
a right to interfere with American trade as it is being 
interfered with; and that no administration in Wash- 
ington, whether Whig or Tory, Republican, Democratic 



HYPHENATIONS 87 

or Progressive, has a right to surrender our dignity 
to any such nation. 

We are face to face to-day with facts, not theories. 
We are face to face with conditions which spell defeat 
in the fight for a further share in the world's trade. 
We are face to face with a problem that demands that 
we either assert our rights, or withdraw our claim to 
be more than a colony of the British crown. The ques- 
tion is: Shall we assert those rights, not insultingly, 
but clearly and in no unmeaning periphrasis, or shall 
we admit the claim of other powers to dictate to us on 
what conditions we shall continue to exist and to have 
intercourse with the people of the world? A century 
ago the answer would have been clear; a half century 
ago, a decade ago, it would have been so. But to-day 
we seem to wallow in the sloth of a psycho-pacificism 
which is incapable of either right thinking or manly 
protest. 

It is time that the American people registered their 
interpretation of the Presidency — that they asserted 
the duty of its incumbent to be the fulfillment of the 
national desire and not the proclamation of personal 
theories, however gilded their frames, that are incon- 
sistent therewith. We want only the rights of a neutral 
nation at peace with all the world, and these are being 
denied to us. It is a telling disgrace that our repre- 
sentatives have not the bowels to maintain the dignity 
of their country. 

BLOCKADING AMERICA. 

If, during the Spanish-American war, the United 



88 HYPHENATIONS 

States Government had ordered its warships to patrol 
the port of London with instructions to search Eng- 
lish ships bound for neutral ports, as for example Italy, 
can there be any question as to the vigorous steps Eng- 
land would have taken to have prevented the carrying 
out of such a blockade? 

This question of blockading is not a new one in 
American history. In the period ending 1812 England 
had so trampled upon the rights of a little nation, the 
United States of .America, that we were obliged to 
fight the British Empire to maintain our sovereign 
rights. To-day we are a great nation, entirely able to 
maintain our dignity and our neutrality; yet strangely 
enough there seems to be a difference between the 
strong Americanism of that time and the psychological 
un- Americanism of to-day. In 1870 President Grant 
instructed Hamilton Fish to send the following words 
to France: "This Government would regard as an un- 
friendly act the hovering of such vessels upon the coast 
of the United States, near to its shores, in the neighbor- 
hood of its ports and in the track of the ordinary com- 
merce of these ports, that intend to intercept the ves- 
sels of trade of its enemy." If I may be so bold as to 
ask, in what way does the attempt of France in Oct., 
1870, to blockade our ports differ from the present 
policy of Great Britain in blockading the port of New 
York ? Had the French navy been bold enough to seize 
American ships bound for neutral ports, I leave it to 
the judgment of any American acquainted with the 
temper of General Grant, whether or no France or 
Germany or any other nation would have been able to 



HYPHENATIONS 89 

maintain such a course without the active protest of 
the United States, backed up by whatever physical 
force may have been necessary. 

Because England is suffering from hysterical fear 
of a Zeppelin raid, and imagines that oil consigned to 
Denmark and Norway is to be used against her, is no 
reason whatsoever for holding us responsible for the 
failure on the part of Norway or Denmark or Holland 
to maintain their own neutrality. Great Britain finds 
it easier to outrage the American flag than to dictate 
to Denmark, Norway or Holland. We are forced to 
the conclusion that it is necessary to appease the fears 
of England at whatever cost to the dignity of the 
United States. If our government were conducted 
with the backbone of little Denmark, for instance, Eng- 
land would be obliged to rely on Denmark's neutrality 
and not on us, and would not attempt to ride rough- 
shod over the American flag. 

Britain finds it difficult to rid herself of the idea that 
we are more than a colonial dependency. Could any- 
thing be more stupid than the British censorship during 
the last three months? The deliberate falsification of 
official German dispatches proves the extent to which 
England seems to be ready to go in order to have the 
world decide the questions of fact through British 
eyes. It is, of course, too utterly stupid because within 
a few days or weeks at most, the facts come through. 
No fair-minded man reads the British dispatches with- 
out realizing that they represent what Britain wants 
and not what has actually taken place. The "Evening 
Post' of yesterday, in an editorial on this subject, stated : 



90 HYPHENATIONS 

"That the British censorship of the war news has re- 
flected credit neither upon the intelligence of the offi- 
cials nor upon their reputation for fair play is daily 
becoming more and more evident. It has plainly b'een 
controlled chiefly by a desire to conceal from the rest 
of the world the extent of any German successes, to 
blacken the enemy's character as much as possible, am 7 
generally to win the aid of public opinion in the United 
States by any means available." 

Public opinion in America cannot be won over by 
falsification and suppression of facts. Neither can it 
be won over by a nation which tramples so ruthlessly 
upon our international rights. The campaign conduct- 
ed in this country so vigorously by England during the 
first sixty days of the war, can no longer cloak her real 
motives in misusing the friendship she seems so anx- 
ious to win. A. Maurice Low, the correspondent of 
the London Morning Post, wired his newspaper yes- 
terday that England need not be alarmed about the 
American attitude in the matter of the seizure of ships, 
that President Wilson's course from the beginning of 
hostilities has been admirable and absolutely correct, 
that America will not allow herself to fall into any 
German trap and that American public opinion is quite 
firmly fixed on the side of England. I venture to pre- 
dict that before another 30 days have gone by public 
opinion here will learn on how substantial a basis Eng- 
lish friendship rests. It is too much to expect that 
England and her Japanese ally have any real interest 
in our affairs, or would make any sacrifice for us. 
Whatever their expressions of friendship may be they 
are bankrupted by the facts. 



HYPHENATIONS 91 

A FAIR JUDGMENT. 

(Continued.) 

I published in this column some days ago Judge 
Grosscup's article on the war. A certain phase of his 
argument was taken exception to by The Times. I 
now have pleasure in printing Judge Grosscup's coun- 
ter-reply thereto. 



An editorial just seen by me in the N. Y. Times com- 
ments on some views of Belgian neutrality expressed 
by me in the Staats-Zeitung. This comment was no 
doubt meant to be fair and was without temper — 
something rather unusual these days in European war 
talk. But it left an incorrect impression of what I had 
written. Will you let me briefly state what my view 
is? 

The Congress of Vienna of 1815, sitting after the 
fall of Napoleon, took Holland and Belgium away from 
Austria and made of them a single kingdom, guarantee- 
ing its neutrality. The parties to that stipulation in- 
cluded England and Prussia, the party feared being 
France. In 183 1 Belgium obtained her independence 
and again had her neutrality guaranteed by the great 
powers, including England and Prussia. The effect 
of this stipulation was that of international "contract" 
between the powers signing, that in case of war be- 
tween them, and especially in case of war between 
other powers, the neutrality of Belgium, a small state 
comparatively, should be observed and protected by 



92 HYPHENATIONS 

the larger states. Unquestionably the decision of Ger- 
many to cross Belgium was in contravention of that 
contract, and, in consequence, an international wrong, 
unless countervailing circumstances had arisen that 
made compliance with that contract a greater wrong. 
The point I wish to bring out is that the relation of 
Germany and England with respect to the Belgian 
matter, so far as England was concerned, was a matter 
of contract only. 

On the other hand Belgium as an independent 
neutral state was entitled, not by this contract, mainly, 
but by the law of nations, to possess her territory in- 
violate from the trespass of other nations. Until early 
in the 19th century this right included the right to 
grant leave to belligerents to cross her territory on the 
way to the enemy. This, says the German authority 
quoted in your editorial — the nations of the continent 
being small and largely separated from each other by 
the territory of other nations — was a matter of "neces- 
sity.'' Since the early part of the century, however, 
the opinion has become pretty near unanimous that a 
neutral nation may not grant such leave, but on the 
contrary must "prohibit" the use of its territory for 
the transit of troops. "It is nevertheless conceivable," 
says Sir Thomas Barclay, an English authority writing 
since 1907 for the Encyclopedia Britannica, "that un- 
der pressure of military necessity, or on account of an 
overwhelming interest, a powerful belligerent state 
would cross the territory of a weak neutral state and 
leave the consequences to diplomacy;" as an illustra- 
tion of which he cites the act of England in crossing 



HYPHENATIONS 93 

Portugese territory, on its way to the South African 
Republics in 1901, over the protest of Portugal. Those 
who succeed him in writing may also cite as an illustra- 
tion Japan's crossing China in this war of 1914 on her 
way to the German Chinese port, and over the protest of 
China also — Japan, according to her premier's state- 
ment, having been called out by England. In a word, 
neither the law of international trespass, nor treaty, 
abolishes "necessity" as an element in international 
warfare. 

Now let us look at the facts as a matter of "con- 
tract" between England and Germany — assuming, of 
course, that Germany was morally right in an attack 
of any kind on France. To march into France by any 
way other than through Belgium is to go by a southerly 
bend through Alsace and Lorraine. That would leave 
the whole of the northern half of France free from 
attack except from the south. Bismarck could afford 
to do this in 1870 because England had announced her 
neutrality. On August 2, 1914, six days before the 
German armies touched Belgium, and when the ques- 
tion of Belgian neutrality was still under discussion 
between the English and German Foreign Offices, Eng- 
land not only had not announced her neutrality but 
gave her engagement to France that she would prevent, 
with her fleet, the Germans from attacking or blockad- 
ing, with their fleet, the northern ports of France. Eng- 
land could not do this and remain a neutral. To say 
she would block with her fleet impending operations 
of the German fleet in the war that was opening in 
France was, in itself, an act of war; this too in con- 



94 HYPHENATIONS 

nection with the fact that, when England asked Ger- 
many her intentions respecting Belgium, Germany 
asked England if she (Germany) remained out of Bel- 
gium, would England remain neutral — a question Eng- 
land refused to answer except to say she would not 
tie her hands. Here then was England already enough 
at war with Germany to block any attack on the north- 
ern ports of France ; ready, too, to come through those 
ports with her armies to the help of the French armies, 
in case she became a full belligerent which her attitude 
clearly foreshadowed; and not above coming through 
Belgium also, in case of stress, upon the flank of Ger- 
many, as her conduct in South Africa showed. Now 
what under such circumstances was Germany to do 
with that "contract" with England? Keep it, as a 
sportsman, you say, would keep his side of a stipula- 
tion however onerous, and thereby increase by one- 
half Germany's chances of defeat, certainly prolong 
the war, and with equal certainty give up a much larger 
toll of lives to bring the war to an end? War is not a 
sport; and defeat in war and its bruises are not the de- 
feated sportsman going home with a sore pride or sores 
on his arms and legs. Defeat in such a war as this 
is the loss of everything for which a capable and gal- 
lant people have struggled since 1870, and the bruises 
are the families left at home without husbands, sons 
and brothers. To say that a "stipulation" thus mis- 
used by England — the England that has since palmed 
it off as the "cause" of war although she had already 
entered the arena before as a partial belligerent at least 
— should prevail over these larger circumstances both 



HYPHENATIONS 95 

military and humane, is not the essence of morality; 
it is quixotic, contrary to the common sense of one's 
obligations, inhuman as well as unhuman, and would 
have marked the German Kaiser as a faithless servant 
of his people. 

But what about the consequences to Belgium? The 
sympathies of the world naturally go out to her — not 
less the sympathies of those who believe she was be- 
guiled into unnecessary fighting on her part than of 
those who think it was her duty to fight. As a neutral 
nation Belgium could not have granted leave to Ger- 
many to cross her territory. I will go as far as the 
authority quoted and say it was her duty to "prohibit" 
Germany from crossing her territory. But she was 
under no obligation to England or the other nations to 
use herself up and her army in that prohibition. Belgium 
is to Germany in military strength about what Switzer- 
land would be to Austria. Switzerland is also a coun- 
try whose neutrality is guaranteed. Now suppose Aus- 
tria, in a time of peace, had put some great dishonor 
on France — had seized her President and her ministers 
when on a visit to Vienna and held them as prisoners 
— how could France reach Austria by land except 
through Germany, Italy or Switzerland? Suppose 
further that Germany refused transit and Italy as a 
member of the Triple Alliance not only refused transit 
but with her navy barred the sea as England barred 
the sea to Germany, would Switzerland be obliged to 
let France eat up her army ? Along with the balance of 
the world Switzerland's sense of justice and feelings 
might be all on the side of France — must she in spite 



96 HYPHENATIONS 

of that on "a point of law" become practically the 
fighting ally of Austria? It puts a "point of law" 
above humanity and ordinary common sense. Who 
thinks that in case Switzerland would not thus immo- 
late her army, Austria or the world would hold her 
accountable afterwards? Who thinks China will be 
held accountable by Germany after the war, even if 
Germany is successful? Who feels that England would 
hold Belgium accountable? And why not? Because 
down in his heart every man knows that to hold a 
power like Belgium or Switzerland to such an account- 
ability would shock the moral sense of the world. In 
any wide vision of the situation, therefore, Belgium 
was not required to resist Germany "by force." She 
had the right to, but was not morally required to. Even 
as a "point of law" in international jurisprudence, her 
obligation did not go that far. International law is not 
unreasonable. It recognizes "necessity" as a force in 
affairs. It does not demand more blood than is neces- 
sary to reach conclusions — demands no fruitless blood 
of the innocent bystander to fulfill a technicality or 
keep the record straight. If Germany is morally wrong 
in this war on France and Russia, my pro-english 
friend does not need this side issue to justify his sym- 
pathies. On the other hand, if Germany is morally 
right as between her and France and Russia, he is for- 
getting the duty not to a sacrifice to a "word" the wider 
and substantial "thing,"' the increased danger of de- 
feat and increased cost of life involved in shutting one's 
eyes to what may be the overshadowing military nec- 
essity of the situation. And if you reply that such 



HYPHENATIONS 97 

doctrine is immoral, my answer is that in this case you 
are making a fetish of something that it would be, in 
the highest sense of humanity, immoral not to disre- 
gard : for it is the letter of the law that killeth, only 
the spirit that maketh alive. England professing still 
to be not at war, holding back Germany on the neutral 
seas — itself a flagrant violation of neutrality — will cut 
a poor figure in her pretense that what brought her 
into the conflict was this subsequent violation of Bel- 
gian neutrality by Germany. 

In a word the position of England toward Germany 
was this : You shall not use the neutral seas to attack 
with your navy the northern ports of France or open 
them up to your armies. I will use my navy to pre- 
vent you from the use of such neutral seas. Nor shall 
you reach northern France with your armies through 
Belgium. I will use this "contract" of neutrality to 
block that. My obligation toward neutrality amounts 
to nothing on the seas ; but your obligation of neutral- 
ity is everything on the land. And because Germany 
did not submit to this double cross on her right to at- 
tack France from the north, England professes to have 
gone into the war as the champion of the cause of the 
inviolability of treaties and of neutrality. 

Peter S. Grosscup. 

TURKEY. 

The breakdown of the Triple Alliance was brought 
about by the historical hatred and fear of Austria by 
Italy. The appearance of Turkey in the present Euro- 



98 HYPHENATIONS 

pean war can be ascribed with equal certainty to the 
historical fear and hatred entertained by her of Russia 
and England. There has not been a day since the "will" 
of Peter the Great was written when Turkey has 
not stood in terror of Russian aggression. She has 
tasted of it on more occasions than one. It was Eng- 
land and France who saved her in the Crimea. It was 
British diplomacy that drew away the Bear of the 
North in 1878. Balked in two attempts to gain the 
Dardanelles or an open sea port in the Balkans Russia 
was about to attempt a third. The Ottoman Govern- 
ment discerned these things as readily as the next gov- 
ernment. It has acted, and acted definitely. What 
interests us is what the result will be. 

The alignment of Turkey with Germany and Aus- 
tria opens a new question in the war in Europe. What 
will Roumania and Bulgaria do ? What will Italy, and 
there is where the rub comes in, do? 

I do not pretend to omniscience, but I should say 
that Bulgaria will probably follow Turkey into war on 
Russia. Greece, and possibly Roumania, will oppose 
Turkey. Their fighting powers are limited, however. 

The peace strength of Turkey is in the neighborhood 
of half a million men. The war strength is quadruple 
her peace strength. It will be seen, therefore, that she 
can constitute a formidable diversion on the southern 
frontier of Russia. If we add to this number a half 
million of Bulgarians, we have a force which can not 
only handle Roumania and Greece but can still prove 
a thorn in the flesh of the Little Father. 

Turkey can no more forgive Russia than Italy can 



HYPHENATIONS 99 

forgive Austria. She will not forgive her, and she will 
fight to the end. It is the last defence of the "Sick 
Man of Europe" of his dominions. If he fails Russia 
will have Dardanelles and the Hellespont and the only 
consolation will be that she has entered upon competi- 
tion in the Mediterranean with Great Britain. That, 
however, is no great consolation to Turkey. 

I do not regard the Turkish military strength as the 
greatest factor, however, in the entrance of Turkey in- 
to the war. As leader of the Moslems, the Sultan has 
an influence which extends far beyond his immediate 
borders. It will be felt not only in Egypt, where Eng- 
land is attempting to cling to her suzerainty, but in In- 
dia and elsewhere. There is no love lost between the 
Porte and England and this advantage may be expected 
to be pressed to the utmost. There will be no "Holy 
War" but there may be something else much more 
serious for Great Britain. The feeling can not but 
extend from Turkey to Persia where British and Rus- 
sian superciliousness has created a strong sentiment 
against these two countries, and where British interests 
especially will suffer. The British trader will be the 
first to feel it. 

There is another aspect of the matter, however. Were 
the Suez Canal to be put out of commission the trans- 
port of the wild tribes of India to the firing line in 
France would be vitally affected. And it is in Turkey's 
power to put the Suez Canal out of Commission. Then 
those "loyal Indians" which are rushing to the support 
of Sir Edward Grey would have to be transported by 
way of Canada or the Cape. The whole stretch of 



100 HYPHENATIONS 

land from Constantinople to Cairo and beyond is Tur- 
key's, and it requires but a word from the Sultan of 
Turkey to turn its teeming population into devoted ene- 
mies of the great enemy of Turkey — England. Sedi- 
tion has appeared in Egypt already — sedition against 
the claims of the British Crown, and with the revolt in 
SouthAfrica and the disaffection in Ireland, it may be 
depended upon to give England her handful of trouble. 

I regard the decision of Turkey to throw her lot 
against Russia and England as one of the significant 
features of the present war. It is one more sign of the 
rejuvenescence of that powerful country and a token 
that not all the world is yet ready to bow the knee and 
say: "Aye," when England claims world dominance. 
It is a cogent protest against the redivision of the 
world between two powers. There is only one thing 
to fear from it: the further extension of the war area. 
But if we have judged Italy rightly, the motives which 
determined her action vis-a-vis Germany and Austria, 
will actuate her to continue in the character of a neu- 
tral country. She has nothing to lose by Turkey's en- 
trance into the war. She has everything to lose by en- 
tering it herself. 

I cannot, therefore, come to any other conclusion 
than that the acquisition of Turkey as an ally has been 
a distinct gain to Austria and Germany. Were its 
prophesied consequences to follow — were Greece and 
Roumania to cast their lots with the Allies against her 
— I should say the same thing. The fighting power of 
Turkey, well led, is so essentially superior to that of 
all the Balkan states that can be aligned against her 



HYPHENATIONS 101 

that the gain to the Dual Alliance is still one of no 
mean significance. With Turkey operating from the 
Black Sea to Egypt, and with her influence extending 
wherever a Moslem dwells, she is a factor which can- 
not be overlooked. 

TSINGTAU. 

A tragedy that will live as long as heroism is re- 
membered is being staged to-day in a small outpost of 
western civilization on the coast of China. The spec- 
tacle of the 4,000 Germans in Tsingtau defying the 
Japanese nation is not one to be lightly regarded. There 
is more to it than the mere fact of a gallant defence — 
more to it than the fact that since Leonidas tried to 
hold Thermopylae against the East of his day, no 
greater example of determined gallantry and patriot- 
ism has been given to the world. There is a deeper 
meaning in the defence of Kiaochow, significant to all 
the West and peculiarly significant to America. It 
marks the beginning of the end of the West in the 
East. 

The pretext which Japan advanced to cover her in- 
trusion into the war was as transparent and as easily 
disposed of as was England's. The excuse advanced for 
her by her apologists, that she harbors a feeling of 
enmity toward Germany on account of the latter's pro- 
test against the occupation of southern Fengtien by 
Japan in 1895, * s true but not comprehensive. For 
France and Russia, who are now Japan's allies against 
Germany, were joined in this protest and Russia, who 
subsequently inherited the leasehold of Port Arthur, 



102 HYPHENATIONS 

was its instigator. Japan threw in her lot with the 
Allies on account of her enmity for Germany, but the 
roots of that enmity were fed in far deeper soil than 
that of the Liaotung Peninsula. 

A few years ago a great deal more was heard of the 
"Yellow Peril" than we hear to-day. Our interests in 
the Pacific have brought us into fighting distance of 
Japan and the phrase has consequently been forced, 
in this country at least, into the class of taboo. We 
scarcely longer dare discuss the internal administration 
of the Philippines for fear that we may give the jingoes 
of Tokyo cause for agitation. But not so Germany. 
The Asiatic "peril" was first enunciated by her think- 
ers and she has never ceased to realize and discuss its 
import. With perhaps no greater appreciation of its 
dangers than we have had, but certainly with a greater 
degree of fearlessness in discussion, she has never lost 
an opportunity to point out the significance and mean- 
ing of the coming struggle between the Occident and 
the Orient. Japan could not fail to remark this. And 
it is just this which underlies the intense and lasting 
hostility of Japan to Germany. 

The aspirations of Japan to the pre-eminent position 
in Asia and in the Pacific are well known. Her leading 
men have taken but small pains to conceal them. In 
times of excitement they are a theme for her dema- 
gogues from Tokyo to Nagasaki. One nation, especial- 
ly, stands in the way of their realization — the United 
States, whose shores, like those of Japan, are washed 
by the Pacific ; and another nation, Germany, has stood 
by ever ready to assist the United States in the defence 



HYPHENATIONS 103 

of its claims. On all the Continent of Europe Germany 
alone has stood out clearly and irrevocably for the West 
as against the East. England has long been an ally 
of Japan and to-day France and Russia are fighting 
under the same standard. On the other hand, Ger- 
many has never once retreated from her position as a 
champion of the civilization of Europe and America. 
When it came to a choice between two evils she chose 
in 1904 the lesser and supported Russia against Japan. 
For all this Japan cannot and will not forgive her. 

But it is not so much the Germany of Europe, which 
can never hope for predominancy in the Pacific, that 
rancors Japan, but Germany the silent ally of the Uni- 
ted States. Until the advent of the present war the 
efficacy of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in case of war 
between ourselves and Japan admitted of a certain 
amount of doubt. Japan may still think that this con- 
dition continues to exist, though England's conduct has 
removed any such impression from the minds of the 
American people. In any event, her logic ran, the hour 
had struck for putting Germany out of the class of 
dangerous enemies. When she had been disposed of 
the one and only ally to whom the United States could 
look would no longer exist. To deal then with the 
United States would be a much simpler task. When, 
further, she argued, by warring on Germany she could 
put herself in possession of points in the Pacific par- 
ticularly helpful in the coming conflict, the case of 
Japan was complete. 

The possession of Kiaochow can not be regarded as 
other than a secondary consideration with Japan. With 



104 HYPHENATIONS 

half of Manchuria to develop in, she does not need it. 
The great things for which Japan is fighting are the de- 
struction of Germany, the crystalization of the Anglo- 
Japanese alliance and the occupation of territories in 
the Pacific strategically important in the struggle 
which she knows is doomed to come with this country. 
All three of these motives bear directly on that struggle. 

It is for this reason that the American people should 
not forget the significance of the fight that is being 
put up by the handful of Germans in Tsingtau. It is 
impossible that this fight can go on much longer. The 
odds are too frightfully great. It will probably end in 
slaughter — and when it ends there will be great re- 
joicing in Japan. The last stronghold of Germany in 
the East will be in the hands of the enemy and the 
first and last ally of the United States in the Pacific 
will have been humbled. The victory itself will not 
have been great in material things but it will symbolize 
the racial aspirations of the Japanese. 

The twenty four centuries which divide the Spartan 
defence of Thermopylae against Xerxes and the hordes 
of Persia, from the battle to hold Tsingtau against the 
East, reveal nothing so significant in the conflict of 
races. 

"STARVING GERMANY OUT." 

The boast of England that she will "starve Ger- 
many out" would seem to have about the same chance 
of being made good as have the famous words of the 
Mrst Lord of Admiralty that unless the German ships 
come out and accept battle in the open they will be 



HYPHENATIONS 105 

"dug out like rats from holes." Of course, no sane 
member of the British Government placed faith in 
either of these flights of patriotic rhetoric. They may 
have served to draw a few more recruits to the colors, 
but that is where their value began and ended. The 
starving out of Germany is no simple task, and as the 
war goes on the difficulty of accomplishing it is made 
more and more apparent. The same thoroughness and 
marvelous efficiency which has recently come to light 
in military Germany is present in no less a degree in 
civil Germany. The development of the German peo- 
ple has been a marvel of well balanced symmetry. Their 
ideal has been the industrial and commercial expan- 
sion of the Fatherland — their necessity, to live in arms 
to defend it. The same people that can hold the world 
at bay and carry their arms into the enemy's country, 
as Germany is doing, may be counted upon not to have 
overlooked the surest foundation of national greatness. 
Were we to admit that Germany is nothing but a huge 
fighting machine, war mad and war glorifying, we 
should still b'e compelled to assume that she has pro- 
vided herself as well with corn as with cannon, as well 
with bread as with bayonets, as well with marks as 
with men. The problem of starving her out then ap- 
pears no less serious than that of driving her out. 

A great many things testify to the difficulties ahead 
of England in any attempt to carry out her threat. 
Among them stands out prominently the fact that while 
England herself has been compelled to declare a mora- 
torium, Germany's sound financial system and internal 
strength made this unnecessary for her. The fact, too, 



106 HYPHENATIONS 

is that while the Allies have been forced to raise foreign 
loans Germany has been able to finance herself. 
The unparalleled sum of over 4,460 million marks was 
subscribed by the German people in the eight days be- 
tween September nth and 19th — and yet England talks 
of crippling Germany financially! "Nothing could 
prove to better effect," says a German Chamber of 
Commerce, "the favorable military and economic situ- 
ation of Germany than this subscription of 4,460 mil- 
lion marks, coming from all classes of the people, from 
the small saver to the richest man, and this, also, is 
the best answer to England's attempt to conquer Ger- 
many by such paltry measures. 

"A nation counting some seventy million people and 
which, along with its remarkable military organization, 
shows such readiness to sacrifice, and maintains such 
healthy and unshaken conditions, cannot be sup- 
pressed." 

The financial stability of the German Empire can- 
not be questioned. Its foundation rests securely on 
the immense German population, the scientific prose- 
cution of agriculture and the mechanical industries, and 
the tremendous natural resources of its mines, forests 
and waters. Germany is to-day the richest country in 
Europe. Compared with Great Britain and France its 
natural wealth is as 400 is to 320 and to 280, respec- 
tively. Financially Germany cannot be "starved out." 

The command of the seas gives England the power 
to control for the moment the overseas trade of Ger- 
many, but this does not by any means infer her ability 
to bring Germany to her knees economically. The three 



HYPHENATIONS 107 

things which Germany needs most in the prosecution 
of the war, which she cannot obtain at home, are oil, 
cotton and copper ; and in her hysteria over submarines 
and under Zeppelins, England has violated all the rules 
of the seas to prevent Germany from getting them 
from abroad. It is reasonable to suppose, however, 
that Germany is already well stocked with arms and 
ammunition, and that England's interference with 
neutral trade is, therefore, more or less in the nature 
of the unnecessary. 

The question of foodstuffs is distinct, but equally 
unalarming. The rapid increase in German imports, 
as well as her exports, in recent years might lead the 
casual observer to the conclusion that Germany is in a 
large measure dependent upon foreign countries for 
her foodstuffs, a conclusion, however, not borne out 
by a careful analysis of her trade reports. The Ger- 
man Empire is less dependent upon the external world 
for the actual necessaries of life than any other coun- 
try of Europe, Russia alone excepted. By a system of 
intensive cultivation she has arrived at a larger pro- 
duction per acre than any other country. A few fig- 
ures will suffice to prove this, as far as it applies to 
Europe. The production of wheat per hectare (2.4 
acres) in 1912 was, for example, in Germany 22.6, in 
units of 100 kilograms or 220 lbs.; in France, 13.8; 
and in European Russia, 6.9. The production of rye 
for the same year was: Germany, 18.5; France, 11.1; 
and Russia, 9; while the output of potatoes was 150.3, 
96.1, and 87.1, respectively. The breeding of live stock 
has developed apace with the other major industries 



108 HYPHENATIONS 

in Germany. Between 1873 and 1912 cattle increased 
from 15,777,000 to 20,159,000 head and swine from 
7,124,000 to 21,885,000. The coal supply of Germany 
is inexhaustible. The iron industry of Germany is sec- 
ond only to our own. The salt mines of the Empire 
gave up in 1912 no less than $50,000,000. And yet 
England claims she can "starve Germany out." 

Allow me to conclude with a quotation from a state- 
ment of the Potsdamer Handelskammer of recent date : 

"As a result of these considerations one can in any 
case see that the German economic position is more 
independent than ever, and that its strength lies in the 
productivity of its soil and in the firmness of its home 
market. It is not to be forgotten that for the German 
foreign trade with neutral countries, important con- 
nections remain open, the maintaining of which must 
be valuable also to the neutral states. 

"The English politicians who form their opinions 
from the great increase of German foreign trade and 
their own commercial conditions, have deceived them- 
selves concerning the limitations on the independence 
of German economic relations and in reference to their 
own power. Here lies the principal error in their cal- 
culations." 

A RAY OF SUNSHINE. 

The American people, whom the American press 
should always serve, but whom it too often attempts 
to dominate, will welcome the ray of hope discernible 
in the altered attitude, apparent in the last fortnight, 
of many of the leading papers of the countrv toward 



HYPHENATIONS 109 

the warring parties in Europe. There was never any 
good reason why such a change of attitude should have 
been made necessary or even possible. The adoption 
in the beginning of a policy of strict neutrality of mind 
and expression would have rendered unnecessary and 
made impossible at this late date this volte face. It is 
not, however, for this reason any the less welcome. 

When war became desirable for England, she de- 
clared it; and recognizing the weakness of her pretext, 
she thought to bolster it among neutral nations and es- 
pecially in the United States, upon whom she was de- 
pendent for many of the sinews of war, by a campaign 
designed to discredit Germany and her motives. Any- 
one who will go to the trouble of re-reading the out- 
put of her own writers and of those Americans who 
fell for it, will be surprised at the vacuity and ineffect- 
iveness of it all. It is astonishing to find upon re- 
reading it how very little is said of England and her 
allies and how consistently the enemy has been pound- 
ed at every point. It is apparent that even the press 
itself is wearying of this process of attempting to tear 
down with no counterbalancing effort at constructive 
argument. The American people showed signs of weari- 
ness some time ago. 

The wonder is not that we have tired of listening to 
England's tales of German savagery, but that we did 
not refuse long ago to listen to them. The pretext ad- 
vanced by England to cover her entrance into the war 
— the violation of Belgian neutrality, could not be de- 
fended in debate. It fell of its own weight and the 
weight of England's historical policy of the "right and 



110 HYPHENATIONS 

supreme duty to insure national safety in time of war." 
The attempt to defame the good name of the German 
army and people, to-day one and the same thing, was 
longer lived, but doomed to the same end. The return 
of the Americans "stranded" in Germany at the time 
of the mobilization gave the lie to the stories of suffer- 
ing and outrage which had been poured into our ears 
from London. Their greatest inconvenience was ex- 
perienced in England itself or on the English boats 
which brought them home. When the truth became 
known Louvain and Rheims disappeared into the same 
category of falsification. The Dutch, the Swedes and 
the home-returned Americans have all borne testimony 
to the excellent behavior of the German troops. Only 
England, France and Belgium have defamed them. 
This was all well enough as a war measure in England, 
France and Belgium, but it had no place in this 
country. But England, having cut the truth with the 
German cable, dictated what "news" we should have. 
A blockade was declared against facts and an attempt 
made to submerge us with fiction. While the columns 
of our papers yearned for stories of the war they were 
loaded with the newly discovered opinions of English 
novelists, dramatists, and journalists of German "mili- 
tarism" and German "kultur." Bernhardi, who was 
never read before the war, not even in Germany, was 
dragged from obscurity and rammed down our throats, 
because England could find for the moment nothing 
worse in Germany than this discarded victim of a hal- 
lucination. When Bernhardi failed longer to make good 
"copy" these same writers turned their grappling hooks 



HYPHENATIONS 111 

against German "kultur," and by mistranslation, dis- 
tortion and casuistry attempted to convince us that 
there was no such thing or if there were, that there 
should not be. 

With such exudations the English squid sought to 
conceal its own motives and ambitions. Its stock of 
liquid is apparently diminishing. The waters are clear- 
ing again and the American press is once more begin- 
ning to see that the true course to steer is closer by the 
American shore. 

I do not pretend to a knowledge of all the motives 
which have worked to the end of this revulsion against 
the dominance of our papers by England. I have sug- 
gested one: that we have tired of having the truth 
withheld from us by the British Censor and of being 
deluged with falsehoods and fabrications which are 
one by one dissipated when the truth comes to light. 
There is another, and I should like to regard it as the 
true reason for this change of sentiment. It cannot fail 
to have been remarked that in every question of an un- 
pleasant nature which has arisen in connection with the 
war, whether of the seizure of our mails, our citizens, 
our ships, or our cargoes, of the blockading of our 
ports, or of other invasions of our rights as a neutral 
and independent nation, England has been the aggres- 
sor. In not one instance has Germany given offence 
to us. On the contrary, making due allowance for the 
rigorous necessities of mobilization, Americans caught 
in Germany by the war were shown every courtesy and 
kindness possible. On the seas, where the German navy 
has wrought such havoc with English ships, surely op- 



112 HYPHENATIONS 

portunity must have presented itself in the last three 
months for an insult to the American flag. Yet we 
have not heard of one. And after all, it is these things 
that count. We may submit for a time to the ocular 
operation of wool-pulling, but not beyond the point 
where our interests are involved. 

We may charitably forgive those Americans who 
placed faith for a space in English promises of friend- 
ship and good-will, even though such promises were 
based on the defamation of Germany; for the progress 
of the war has taught them how ill advised they were 
in the premises. The German Government and the 
German people have continued throughout the trying- 
days of their death-struggle those expressions of good- 
will for the United States which have characterized 
the life history of the two nations. They have done 
more — they have given cogent signs that there is body 
to these expressions. With equal consistency, on the 
other hand, England has continued her policy of insult 
and aggression, until we are less in her eyes than Can- 
ada. These are facts which are being substantiated day 
by day in the columns of our papers. They stand and 
have stood side by side with England's protestations 
of friendship and her tales of German savagery. There 
have been some Americans able all along to choose of 
fact and protestation the former. It is a wholesome 
evidence of true Americanism that their number is in- 
creasing rapidly. The press, and especially when the 
press is wrong, cannot long oppose the will of the peo- 
ple. There is no need for it to surrender — only for it 
to return to the path from which it should never have 



HYPHENATIONS 113 

departed, and to follow that path in the future. It 
should cut the lashings which hold it to England and 
aim only to serve the American people. It should cease, 
in other words, to be an English press represented in 
the United States. The signs that it is gradually doing 
so are encouraging. 

The last week has seen the appearance of two editor- 
ials in New York papers which might have been writ- 
ten months ago. I allude to The Evening Post's com- 
ment on the naval fight off the coast of Chile and The 
Evening Sun's leader of November 5th : "The Defence 
of Kiao-Chau." Both articles are well worth the at- 
tention of Americans. They are ably written, reveal 
a high degree of analytical reasoning and, best of all, 
they are fair. The publication in book form of The 
Evening Sun's editorials on the war is intended, I be- 
lieve, and one can only hope that the high standard set 
in the leader of the 5th instant, will be the standard of 
the book. It is to be hoped, too, that this standard 
will soon be that of the American press generally. 

GERMAN BARBARITIES. 

When Georges Pielot and Leon Lebot stepped from 
the French liner "Rochambeau" a few days ago, into 
the waiting arms of a score or more of reporters, they 
relieved themselves of their experiences in the trenches 
before Rheims. I quote from The Evening World: 
"Both Pielot and Lebot, who was hit four times by 
shrapnel fragments in the same fight, agreed that dur- 
ing the fighting around Rheims a French battery was 



114 HYPHENATIONS 

stationed directly behind the great Cathedral. They 
gave this information innocently, not realizing that they 
were verifying the German contention in excuse for 
firing on the ancient pile." And so another London 
lie is nailed to the mast. 

Perhaps the outcry which came from France and 
England over the incident has been forgotten. But what 
hypocrisy it showed, in the light of the facts, which 
we have had from other sources before and now have 
from the lips of Frenchmen themselves, that the French 
were using the Cathedral to shelter their artillery ! 
Strangely enough — I was about to say, but nothing is 
longer strange in the Anglicized press of this country 
— the only publicity given to the testimony of these 
eye-witnesses to the fact was contained in the few 
words quoted above from an evening paper. 

Similar tales are being coined daily with regard to 
the situation in Belgium. The German Government 
insists upon the civilian population returning to work. 
There is a sufficiency of food at hand, if only every- 
body does his share in starting the wheels of industry 
revolving again. An idle and hostile population — and 
idleness breeds hostility — does not aid in the solution 
of the serious problems facing Germany in her attempt 
to organize a temporary government for Belgium. And 
yet a howl goes up from England and America over 
Germany's demand that the Belgians if they would eat, 
must work. When all the facts are at hand we shall 
probably discover that a large element of the people in 
that distressed country are sheltering themselves be- 
hind foreign charity, as the French artillery found shel- 



HYPHENATIONS 115 

ter behind the Cathedral of Rheims. Want, misery, 
and all the other horrors which follow in the train of 
war are unquestionably present in Belgium to-day. So 
far as possible the well-wishers of the Belgian people 
in other countries should act in relief of them. But if 
the Belgians themselves refuse to do their share they 
absolve others from the need of assisting them and of 
the propriety of sympathizing with them. I feel as 
keenly as anyone the plight which has befallen Bel- 
gium, but I cannot agree with those who condemn the 
German Government for taking the first step neces- 
sary to bringing the country back to the normal. When 
the Belgian people have shown themselves as willing 
to work as they have been to fight, when they have 
given an earnest proof of their desire to help them- 
selves, those who are willing to help them will have an 
additional stimulus to charity. 

The destruction of the "Emden" brings to a close 
a chapter of the war which has been followed with 
thrilling interest from one end of the world to the 
other. It has long been merely a matter of time when 
she would run foul of one or more of the seventy odd 
warships that were scouring the oceans for her. She 
found her grave in the same waters on which for over 
three months she had ridden and revelled in the task 
of doing as much injury as possible to the enemy. She 
went down with a clean record. The story of the "Em- 
den" cannot be distorted. It opens no opportunity for 
defamation ; and for this reason, apparently, none has 
been attempted. She sent to the bottom over forty 
vessels, with a total tonnage of between 70,000 and 



116 HYPHENATIONS 

80,000 tons, without the loss of a single life. This record 
will live as long as naval history is written and read. 
She accomplished it in hostile waters, far from home 
and from any friendly port where she might coal, re- 
pair or provision, living the life of a rover, hounded 
by those who sought her, knowing not when she might 
be caught but only that the day would come, moved by 
the sole idea of doing as much damage as she could 
to the commerce and navies of the enemies of the Fath- 
erland. The British had but scant praise for her 
achievements while she still rode the waves of the In- 
dian Ocean. When she settled, hardly more than a 
cinder, beneath them the tap of eulogy is turned on. 
Says The Daily Telegraph : "It is almost in our heart 
to regret that the Emden has been captured and de- 
stroyed. We certainly hope that Commander Karl von 
Muller, her commander, has not been killed, for, as 
the phrase goes, he has shown himself an officer and a 
gentleman. He has been enterprising, cool, and daring 
in making war on our shipping, and has revealed a nice 
sense of humor. He has, moreover, shown every pos- 
sible consideration to the crews of his prizes. So far 
as is known, he destroyed over 74,000 tons of shipping 
without the loss of a single life. There is not a sur- 
vivor who does not speak well of this young German, 
the officers under him, and the crew obedient to his 
orders. The war on the sea will lose something of its 
piquancy, its humor, and its interest now that the Em- 
den has gone, but she had to go because she was so ex- 
pensive." 

The English are always generous winners ; but win- 



HYPHENATIONS 117 

ning or losing, the praise of an enemy is always that 
cherished most by the warrior. If Commander von 
Miiller has survived to read the comments of the Lon- 
don press on the exploits of the "Emden," now that 
she is no more, they may serve to soften the sorrow 
which he must feel at the cutting short of the career 
of his gallant little boat. 

The moral of this comment is not so much, however, 
that the praise expressed for the heroism and chivalry 
of the Commander and crew of the "Emden" is only 
what is justly due to them, but that it was expressed 
only when their work was ended. The question may 
justly and appropriately be asked: Will not the same 
praise be bestowed on the German commanders and 
troops fighting on land to-day, when there is no more 
left of Germany than there is of the "Emden," if 
that day should follow this war? It would be asking 
more than can be expected of human nature to suggest 
that such praise be accorded now, by those who have 
set out to destroy Germany. But can it not be sug- 
gested that it would be much more fair, much more 
manly and honorable, for the enemies of Germany to 
desist from setting on foot stories which have no basis 
in fact and which are so easily exploded as that re- 
garding the wanton destruction of the Cathedral of 
Rheims ? I have not the slightest doubt that when the 
war is over, if England regards herself as a victor, the 
press of Great Britain and this country will be as loud 
in their praise of the chivalry of the German troops in 
Belgium and France as is the press of London to-day 
of the chivalry of Commander von Miiller and his of fi- 



118 HYPHENATIONS 

cers and men. The German Army and the Imperial 
Navy are recruited from the same nation. One brother 
joins the land service and the other takes to the sea. 
By what system of logic can we arrive at the conclu- 
sion that this simple choice of service, often-times, per- 
haps, no more than an accident, makes of the one a 
chivalrous sailor and a gentleman and of the other the 
brute which German soldiers are reported to be? There 
is not sufficient difference in either the discipline or 
the training of the duties of the soldier and the sailor 
to account for it. Born from the same womb, taught 
at the same knee, bred up under the same skies and 
breathing inspiration from the same institutions which 
surround both, war leaves one a man still, while it 
turns the other into a beast. So palpably illogical is 
the reasoning which underlies all attempts to convince 
the world of this and of the truth of the stories of Ger- 
man ''barbarism" and "savagery," that it bares the 
motives which prompt them and reveals them in their 
true light. 

When peace comes again to Europe we shall have the 
truth. We shall have columns and volumes and lib- 
raries extolling the heroism of the Germans on land, 
as we are now having paragraphs on the same quality 
of Germans afloat. If Germany is crushed we sha 1 l 
have them from her enemies : if victorious, she will 
write them herself, as all people do. But the memory 
of what we read to-day will never be quite wiped out 
by all that we read years hence. The time to tell the 
truth is now. A manly man does not wait until his op- 
ponent is in his grave before admitting the good quali- 



HYPHENATIONS 119 

ties which he may possess. Should a nation be less 
manly than the individual ? 

MACHIAVELLI UP-TO-DATE. 

I have repeatedly emphasized my strong wish to sup- 
port, in the finest sense of loyalty, our government's 
policy of strict neutrality. It has always been very 
clear that only such a policy would leave this countr 
in the enviable position of finally being able to act as 
the composing factor of the present world struggle. 
In the pursuance of such a policy the status of inter- 
national law has inevitably brought about many situ- 
ations, apparently giving either the English or the Ger- 
man sympathizers reason for feeling displeased with 
actions or mostly with non-actions, by the State De- 
partment. I have been tempted to take exception to 
the one or the other attitude of the State Department. 
For instance, I have been and still am in serious doubts 
about the economic advisability of taking advantage 
of the license given under the Hague Convention, of 
allowing the export to either belligerent of munitions of 
war. Does it not seem that this method of furthering 
the war, though temporarily profitable to a small num- 
ber of industries, is bound to make the losses for the 
other industries all the more severe in the long run? 
To be sure, Art. 7 of the Convention says: "A neutral 
power is not bound to prevent the export of arms." 
The ethics of a policy of peace-prayers on Sundays and 
the export of munitions of war on week-days each one 
will have to settle for himself. 



120 HYPHENATIONS 

It is therefore only after the most mature delibera- 
tion and after having consulted with men deeply versed 
in the history of international law, that I feel called 
upon to voice the strongest protest against the appar- 
ent attitude of the State Department in regard to Eng- 
land's recent contentions about contraband and the 
right of search. The State Department seems hypno- 
tized by British methods, often truly Machiavellian. 
We have repeatedly heard of an extreme and radical 
action by Great Britain, followed by concessions, ap- 
parently due to representations of the State Depart- 
ment. 

"From whence it is to be observed, that he who 
usurps the government of any State is to execute and 
put in practice all the harshnesses, which he thinks 
material, at once, that he may have no occasion to re- 
new them often, but that, by his discontinuance, he may 
mollify the people, and by his benefits bring them over 
to his side, and that to see and to hear him he appears 
all goodness, integrity, humanity, and religion, and has 
nothing in his mouth but fidelity and peace." 

(Machiavelli, "The Prince," ch. VIII— ch. XVIII.) 

When, in 1904, Russia declared certain articles ab- 
solute contraband, Lord Lansdowne, in the House of 
Lords, made a sharp protest characterizing such action 
as one "regardless of the well-defined rights of neu- 
trals." To-day, the same England proceeds in the 
same arbitrary manner in declaring various articles 
"absolute contraband." Fine phrases are made to cover 
the insatiable lust expressed in "rule Britannia." 

But why is it, that we appear to be in such an un- 



HYPHENATIONS 121 

enviable position of dependency? The double stand- 
ard of the British Navy and the traditional policy of 
England on the seas is the cause of our present, as it 
has been the cause of our past incongruous and unen- 
viable position in regard to our international trade dur- 
ing war time. But how much clearer has been the 
vision of our forefathers, how much more self-reliant, 
with how much more Americanism have such issues 
formerly been met! Great Britain has for centuries 
claimed the absolute rule over the seven seas, not in 
words but in acts. Every concession from this claim 
we had to gain by most resolute actions or, as in 1812, 
by war. 

How consistently this British policy of "claim every- 
thing and concede nothing" has been followed, is most 
easily realized by taking up the text-books on inter- 
national law used in the British navy. In one, just 
recently published, we find under the "rule of war of 
1756," relating to coastwise and colonial shipping, the 
comment by the author, probably the best known Eng- 
lish authority on international law, that this "question, 
raised by England in 1756 and again in 1793, will crop 
up" again. To keep things in an uncertain state has 
been England's policy, for then she can claim every- 
thing and she need not concede anything. 

The same text-book, commenting on the Declaration 
of London of 1909, contains in its closing paragraph 
this remark by the author : "All looked forward to its 
(Declaration of London) early ratification. But a 
strong agitation against the declaration, and especially 
that part of it which refers to contraband of war, arose 



122 HYPHENATIONS 

in England. The House of Lords threw out the bill. 
Without the bill an international prize court was im- 
possible." Of course, such an international court 
is the very thing which would militate against "rule 
Britannia/' 

How little England is disposed to relinquish her 
claim to be the "Mistress of the Seven Seas" and 
how hypocritical her protests against "militarism" are. 
Lord Roberts proves in his recent article in the Theo- 
logian "Hibbert Journal," when he says "It would be 
folly (after the war) seriously to reduce the strength 
of our navy and of our army, simply because they have 
nobly fulfilled their dangerous tasks. Do not let us 
pay any attention to the foolish prattle of those who 
talk of this war as the doom of conscription." 

The London Times gives away the real English 
theory by saying : "It is our present job to work all day 
and all night for some years in order to prevent all 
states with a passion for hegemony from challenging 
us in the future." 

Has our State Department agreed to second the 
British passion for hegemony? Shall we, free Ameri- 
cans, again be forced to obey the orders of "John 
Bull"? Is our dream about the revival, about the com- 
ing supremacy of American shipping to be rudely 
shattered by having our State Department docilely, 
even meekly concede British pretences to the dominion 
of the sea? 

Many, imposed upon by the Machiavellian methods 
of the British foreign publicity office, speak thought- 
lessly of the danger to this country from a German 



HYPHENATIONS 123 

victory. The holy fear of a mythical militarism has 
been thrown into their minds. Germany is accused of 
striving for world conquest, threatening all of us with 
an unwelcome dependency. I do not want to argue 
about the rights and wrongs of this theory. I only 
want to point out, that it is a theory and I want to 
impress upon my readers the fact that our dependency 
upon Great Britain, measured with the ordinary meth- 
ods available to us for determining something of this 
nature, confronts us, to speak with Grover Cleveland, 
as a condition, the very moment we permit her pre- 
sumptions to stand unchallenged. Our ports are prac- 
tically being blockaded by England, as not only in ac- 
cordance with the intention of international law trade 
with belligerent countries is closely inspected by Eng- 
land, but. trade with neutral countries is equally ham- 
pered and interfered with. Soft-spoken English dip- 
lomacy tries to justify this interference with neutral 
trade by referring to the Springbok case, commented 
upon by our Supreme Court in the memorial decision 
as follows : 

"The vessel was captured because the bills of lading 
disclosed the contents of 619, but concealed the con- 
tents of 1388 of the 2007 packages, which made up the 
cargo. 

"Why were the contents of the packages concealed? 
The owners knew that they were going to a port in 
the trade with which the utmost candor of statement 
might be reasonably required. 

"The adventure was undertaken several months after 
the answer of Earl Russell, Foreign Secretary in the 



124 HYPHENATIONS 

British Ministry, to the Liverpool ship-owners in which 
he distinctly stated the fact that he was unable to deny 
that Nassau was a port notoriously used by persons 
engaged in systematic violation of blockade." 

Of course, in addition it must be remembered that, 
at the time, the policy of the British government clearly 
favored one belligerent at the expense of the other, 
something that in the present crisis could certainly not 
be said of the expressed policy of our own government. 

THE "KAISER'S WAR/' 

The assertion that the present war was the creation of 
the German Emperor, aided and abetted by a "military 
clique" in Germany, has stared so often at me out of 
the columns of oiir dailies, weeklies and monthlies that 
only an intimate knowledge of the German people has 
preserved my faith in the opinion that it is a war of 
defence, waged on the defensive by the German nation 
as a whole. The "Kaiser's war," as a slogan, has un- 
doubtedly done good service in England, where just now 
they need good service done. Almost anything will 
rouse the British people to "cut a throat or sink a ship." 
As a war measure, therefore, one can readily under- 
stand why it has been worked to the utmost by the 
British Government, and why such writers as Doyle, 
Wells and Arnold Bennett have done their best to 
carry it into those neutral countries the moral support 
of which the British are so solicitous for. I have al- 
ways had a suspicion, however, that the doctrine of the 
"Kaiser's war" has not had the unanimous acceptance 



HYPHENATIONS 125 

of the British people. The censorship, which still 
blockades us as far as the truth is concerned, has made 
impossible of success any attempt to get at the real 
facts of British feeling in regard to the war. Occas- 
ionally a blockade of even this sort may be "run," how- 
ever, and it is apparent that something of this nature 
took place on the nth instant. I was startled, in glanc- 
ing down a column of The Evening Sun of that date 
to meet this admission of Mr. Andrew Bonar Law, 
Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons 
and one of England's few "democrats:" "I have never 
cherished the delusion that this is a war of the German 
ruler's only. It is a war of the German nation." 

I was startled not that such an admission had been 
made, especially when it was credited to a man of Mr. 
Law's well known proclivity for speaking his mind re- 
gardless of consequences, but rather that it escaped the 
eagle eye of the British censor and was permitted to 
come to this country. So very careful has this official 
been in his education of the American people that I 
sought in the papers of the following morning a con- 
firmation of The Evening Sun's report. A paragraph 
or two were given by all the morning papers to Mr. 
Law's remarks, but from everyone of them this admis- 
sion damning to Great Britain's claim that the war is 
a "Kaiser's war" was deleted. Whether the deletion 
was accomplished on this side of the Atlantic or on 
the other, I am at a loss to say. The more probable 
explanation of the matter is that the censor, with true 
British tardiness, eventually "got next to himself" and 
erased from the later wires the most interesting portion 



126 HYPHENATIONS 

of Mr. Bonar Law's caustic criticism of the English 
slogan. I have no reason for assuming that The Even- 
ing Sun's report was inaccurate. The reports given 
to the other dailies were merely incomplete. The harm 
has been done, however, and we may expect in the 
early future to hear of another British censor being 
sent to the firing line, with a sword by his side and a 
cigar in his teeth. 

This little error on the part of the official entrusted 
with the preservation of England's press consistency 
leads to a great many other thoughts. Among them 
the inconsistency of some of the American papers now 
loud in their outcry against Germany and the German 
Emperor. Among them, also, the insecurity of repu- 
tation. Almost any of the great New York dailies 
might be quoted as an example. The most convenient 
for the moment is The New York Times, whose Maga- 
zine Section of Sunday, June 8, 19 13, I have before me. 
Allow me to quote a few letters which appeared on 
the first page of this Section, as evidence of the feel- 
ings entertained at the time for the German Emperor 
by the distinguished gentlemen whose names are sub- 
scribed to them. "To assert that the Kaiser has been 
a hypocrite for over a quarter of a century," wrote 
Bishop Nuelsen recently, "or that he has radically 
changed over night would be expressing a rather rash 
judgment." The German Emperor of July 1914 was 
the same German Emperor of whom the following 
words were written in June 1913. 

"The one man outside this country from whom I 
obtained help in bringing about the Peace of Ports- 



HYPHENATIONS 127 

mouth was His Majesty William II. From no other 
nation did I receive any assistance, but the Emperor 
personally, and through his Ambassador in St. Peters- 
burg, was of real aid in helping induce Russia to face 
the accomplished fact and come to an agreement with 
Japan — an agreement the justice of which to both 
sides was conclusively shown by the fact that neither 
side was satisfied with it. 

"This was a real help to the cause of international 
peace, a contribution that far outweighed any amount 
of mere talk about it in the abstract, for in this as in 
all other matters an ounce of performance is worth a 
ton of promise." 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating. When 
the German Emperor went upon the throne and de- 
veloped his independence of Bismarck, and his inten- 
tion to exercise his own will in the discharge of his 
functions, there were many prophecies that this meant 
a disturbance of the peace of Europe. Instead of that, 
the truth of history requires the verdict that, consid- 
ering the critically important part which has been his 
among the nations, he has been, for the last quarter 
of a century, the greatest single individual force in the 
practical maintenance of peace in the world." 

Wm. H. Taft. 

"The German Emperor's life has been worthy of 
his father and of his mother, and no higher praise can 
be rendered in grateful acknowledgment of a great 



128 HYPHENATIONS 

career — great with the abounding blessings of peace 
through steadfast striving for strength, and duty done 
for his people and his justice to his neighbors. 

"His mother's nation was enthusiastic, loyal to his 
ideals, and ever able to make honesty of purpose unite 
with poetic and artistic temperament. Her clever mind 
and wide discernment enabled her to place all matters 
in their true perspective. Her son inherited her gifts, 
with his father's truth and gallant steadfastness. 

"This generation of Germans have good reason to 
be proud and to love their patriotic Emperor. 

Argyle. 

"The highest praise that I can offer concerning the 
Emperor William II is that he would have made as 
good a King of England as our history has provided, 
and as good a President of the United States as any 
since George Washington. 

"It was said of the Emperor William that he was 
medieval in his war spirit, but he has proved himself 
to be a modern keeper of the peace. He was declared 
to be reckless, and the worst that can be said of him 
after twenty-five years is that he is impulsive. The 
world has never been hard upon men of impulse who 
are not at the same time reckless and selfish, and the 
Emperor William is neither of these. 

"When he became Emperor Germany — and Prussia 
particularly — was rigid, narrow, and pedantic in all too 
many respects. Under his enlightened, tolerant, and 
broad-minded guidance she has become — even Prussia 
has become — resilient, absorptive, and almost impul- 
sively adaptable. 



HYPHENATIONS 129 

"The world owes the Emperor William a debt of 
gratitude. He might have found cause to reap ad- 
vantage from European embroilment of his own mak- 
ing, but he has proved himself among the most civilized 
internationally patriotic of rulers." 

Gilbert Parker. 
These letters speak for themselves. I shall, there- 
fore, make no comment on them. I might go on and 
quote a great many other things which appeared in this 
section of a New York Sunday paper and from other 
contemporaries. I might call attention, for example, 
to Mr. Carnegie's "Kaiser Wilhelm II., Peacemaker," 
to Lord Blyth's "Kaiser Central Factor of Germany's 
Peaceful Policy" or to Alfred H. Fried's "Kaiser Has 
Kept all Europe From War." The list of eulogistic 
articles written last year might be extended ad infini- 
tum. But what's the use? The high regard in which 
William the Second of Germany was held in this coun- 
try and in Europe up to the time of this war is well 
known. It is sufficient earnest, too, that he is not the 
blood-mad "war-lord" which it has pleased England 
since the inception of the war to picture him. A leopard 
cannot change his spots — neither can a ruler of the 
German Emperor's recognized tendencies change his 
nature over night. I am glad to see that in England 
there is at least one man who is prepared to admit this 
fact. I should welcome evidence that in this country 
there are more who are willing to see that the war now 
being waged in Europe was not of the German Em- 
peror's seeking nor of his creation but one that was 
accepted by the German nation as a whole. 



180 HYPHENATIONS 

"G. B. S." ON THE WAR. 

After a hundred days of English explanations, dis- 
tortions and hypocrisies and all the other instruments 
of casuistry which can be employed by a Government 
to justify its conduct in a most ambiguous position, it 
remained for an Irishman to permit himself the luxury 
of telling the truth. I admit that under the circum- 
stances of England's position as a party in the present 
war it is no easy matter for an Englishman either to 
face the truth or to tell it. It requires a degree of his- 
torical analysis, a certain amount of self-inspection, and 
to some extent a possible admission that the enemy has 
a moiety of right on his side of the barbed wire en- 
tanglements. It was not to be expected that those di- 
rectly responsible for England's present predicament 
would b'e the first to frankly state the facts of the case. 
They have been too busy recently with other things. 
It was rather to be expected that the truth would come 
from some other corner of the British Empire. And 
it came last Sunday from George Bernard Shaw. I 
do not maintain that Germany has told all the truth, 
that she has any claim to all the right in the present 
conflict or that all the justice is on her side. I have 
simply given expression to a suspicion all along en- 
tertained that England has not had a monopoly of the 
truth, right and justice. I find this suspicion ably sus- 
tained in Mr. Shaw's article in The Times. 

Writing a little common sense about the war, Mr. 
Shaw sweeps aside the restrictions imposed by nation- 
ality upon so many British authors and assumes an 



HYPHENATIONS 131 

international point of view. As an Irishman, this was 
possible for him to do. Standing to a certain extent 
apart from the class which furnishes the recruits for 
Downing Street he found it more easy still. He speaks 
of the militarists of England precisely as he speaks of 
those of Germany and Russia and France. Since 
Cramb, no other denizen of the British Isles has been 
able to see things just as they are or to represent them 
as being other than exactly what they are not. The 
position adopted by Mr. Shaw is a distinct step for- 
ward. It offers a real neutral ground on which we all 
may meet and discuss the true character of the strug- 
gle going on before our eyes. That the American peo- 
ple, through their many editors, did not hit upon this 
idea is strange, to say the least. It is one which should 
have appealed to all true democrats from the outset. 
I cannot picture any liberty and equality loving Ameri- 
can sympathizing more with the sweep of Sir Edward 
Grey's pen which plunged England into a desperate 
war which her people as a people neither sought nor 
desired, than with the activities of that war party in 
Germany of which so much has been written. There is 
here no ground for argument. We condemn both, and 
equally. 

Of course, Mr. Shaw will not be taken seriously in 
England. He never has been. Very few Irishmen, in 
fact, are taken seriously in England until there is room 
for them at the front. And no man who talks com- 
mon sense in England, or in Germany for that matter, 
will be listened to while the war is on. Common 
sense may follow peace, but it will not precede 



132 HYPHENATIONS 

it. But while he will not be accepted in England, Mr. 
Shaw will be read, and it amuses me to picture the 
"upholders of little nations" and the "defenders of the 
democracy and civilization of Europe" choking with 
impotent rage at the playwright who has dared to speak 
what they have striven so hard to forget. I am inclined 
to believe, however, that the conscience of England will 
be awakened by the thunder-clap of Shaw rather than 
by the wee, small voice of its professional apologist, 
Mr. Asquith. But while Mr. Shaw will not be taken 
seriously in England there is no good reason why he 
should not be so taken in this country. The daily press 
of New York, however, and notably The Times and 
The World, acting apparently on the assumption that 
while there is much which it does not understand there 
is nothing which it cannot editorially explain, is in- 
clined to dismiss Mr. Shaw with considerably less than 
a few words. Incidentally, by doing so, it appears to 
prove his argument unanswerable and, as such, worthy 
of consideration. Personally, I prefer the intellectual 
neutrality of Mr. Shaw to the wholly partisan and bel- 
ligerent attitude of The Times and The World, for 
example. 

The "meat" of Mr. Shaw's article which appeared 
in last Sunday's Times is simply this and nothing else : 
Germany has her militarists and her Junkers, and so 
has England and of the latter the simon-pure article 
is represented by Sir Edward Grey. The militarists of 
Germany, who can not count the Emperor a member 
of their party, found their voice in Bernhardi and 
Treitschke. Winston Churchill, a perfect example of 



HYPHENATIONS 133 

militarist, and Sir Edward Grey spoke for those of 
England; in Russia it was Sasonow; and in France it 
was those fire-eating Boulevardiers, Clemenceau and 
Delcasse. There is not much to choose between any 
two of them. They all represent or have represented 
the same spirit of oligarchic dominance, based upon 
force, so incompatible with and repugnant to our own 
ideals. They are internationally interchangeable, for 
they speak the same language, stand for the same things 
and live for the same ends. I have not the slightest 
doubt that had Mr. Churchill worn the uniform of the 
German Navy he would have toasted "The Day" quite 
as enthusiastically as it has ever been drunk to. I can 
hear Sir Edward Grey alluding to a treaty as "a scrap 
of paper," though in somewhat more diplomatic words. 
I can imagine anything and everything that has been 
charged to the German militarists as transpiring with 
only a negligible difference in setting in Russia or 
France or England. Mr. Shaw alone has succeeded so 
far in getting this idea past the English censor. 

While admitting the existence of a military party in 
Germany, which no one will deny, I am not one of 
those who hold the present war and England's part in 
it as necessary to the salvation of Germany. She has 
other parties, and I am quite confident that she is able 
to handle her internal affairs without the assistance of 
either Mr. Churchill's bragga-docio or Sir Edward 
Grey's diplomatic chicanery. I am equally confident 
that when the war is over Germany will straighten out 
not only the question of militarism but the many other 
problems which confront her. It is to be hoped that 



134 HYPHENATIONS 

the other belligerent nations will be able to do the same. 
Only in this way will this war be "The War that Will 
End War." 

The great difference between the militarists of Ger- 
many and those of the other countries now at war is 
that the former have made less bones about what they 
had to say. The German temperament is antagonistic 
to duplicity. Some of her enemies, on the other hand, 
seem to revel in it. A pertinent exemplification is seen 
in the fact that diplomatically Germany has not had 
the best of it during the past decade. She has not had 
a great "diplomatist" since Bismarck. The Germans, 
in their militarism as in their diplomacy, have been 
brutally frank, and hating dissimulation have suffered 
by their hatred. There are at least two ways of saying 
almost everything, and Bernhardi chose apparently the 
wrong way. All that he ever said or wrote finds its 
counterpart in the teachings of the militarists of all 
the European nations. With greater or less disingenu- 
ousness all but Germany dissembled. She suffers to- 
day for her frankness. When the German Chancellor 
alluded to the Treaty of 1839 as "a scrap of paper" 
he was but quoting the expression of a British states- 
man of an earlier day — a fact which shows not only 
how very little reason those who live in English glass 
houses have to throw stones at those who occupy simi- 
lar edifices across the North Sea but also how far re- 
moved in candor is present day British diplomacy from 
tk&t of a generation or two ago. 

After all, however, one should not be too hard on 
poor old England. She has a Government that is at- 



HYPHENATIONS 135 

tending to the thumb-screws with a conscientiousness 
sufficiently religious to satisfy her most ardent adver- 
sary. And her "national attitude" and those of her 
enemies, in the last analysis, do not differ so widely. 
She is looking out for herself. She has made the earth 
her foot stool and is now attempting to deny Germany 
a place in the sun. We may disagree as to her rights 
in the premises, b'ut we can not refuse to applaud her 
nerve. The principal objection which can be raised 
to her conduct is that she is not willing to tell us, as 
Germany has done, just what she is about. It's "Eng- 
land's way," however, and that covers a multitude of 
omissions and reservations. The cocktail which the 
First Lord of the Admiralty mixes to "The Day" is 
made up of one part of conscience, seven of dissimu- 
lation, and the rest of boasting, with just a dash of 
justice (or, if that is not at hand, of hypocrisy.) 

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS. 

We leave our labors to-day to offer up to the Great 
Provider of life and all its blessings a nation's thanks 
for what He has vouchsafed to us during the year now 
closing and to ask His grace and guidance through the 
year before us. There is much to be thankful for — 
and much to be asked. 

As we pause in our busy lives for these few hours 
of reflection and praise-offering the sound of Europe 
rolls in upon us "clearer, nearer, deadlier than before." 
It is the sound of thousands of guns* — of millions of 
small arms — "the shout of the conquered — the con- 



136 HYPHENATIONS 

queror's yell" — the wail of the widow and the sobs of 
her child. While we gather at our happy family boards* 
ten million men are wallowing in the trenches of Eu- 
rope, slaughtering or to be slaughtered : and for every- 
one of them some heart at home is breaking. 

It is not for us to ask the reason why. The Lord 
giveth and the Lord taketh away. But let us not thank 
the Father of All that we are better than the other man. 
It is but fifty years since our own hearts were breaking 
— or broken — on this same Thanksgiving Day. We 
should be thankful only that we have been spared and 
that out of the bounty that is ours we have been per- 
mitted to render a mite for the alleviation of the suf- 
fering inflicted upon the homeless and hungry. 

The custom of this day is older than our independ- 
ence. It was laid by that stalwart band of Anglo- 
Saxons who forsook Europe for "the freedom to wor- 
ship God." It has been perpetuated through the years, 
and each season has added to its sacredness and sig- 
nificance. We have grown from a cluster of families 
to a nation of 90,000,000 people, drawn from every 
continent and from the islands of the seas. Wherever 
the hand of the oppressor has fallen too heavily escape 
has been found on our shores. Wherever genius and 
ambition have sought a wider sphere they have found 
it with us. We are a people mixed in blood but in 
mind one ; and I know of no better day on which to re- 
mind ourselves of this than that which calls the Gentile 
and the Jew within our gates — the Saxon, Teuton, 
Latin, Slav— to his peculiar altar, but for the common 
purpose of thanking God for His protection and in- 



HYPHENATIONS 137 

crease of the United States of America. Then, if ever. 
are we all Americans, in the highest, noblest and most 
sacred sense of the word. 

The ties of blood and language and tradition which 
bind us to the homes from which we have come loosen 
with the years. They can not be snapped at once. When 
the world is at peace the youngest immigrant soon 
ceases to think of the happy little village, with all that 
it held dear to him, on the Rhone or the Rhine or the 
Shannon. A catastrophe in the "old country" — and 
such memories are fanned into life in the hearts of the 
third and fourth generations. We are not the less 
American for this. I think rather we are the better 
Americans for it : for out of this spirit millions in char- 
ity have flowed back to our parent countries in times 
of war and flood and famine. It is the surest founda- 
tion of international charity and good-will. 

The tragedy of the present year has revived these 
sympathies in many an American heart where they 
seemed dead. I do not think, however, that they have 
over-flowed their legitimate bounds. A harsh word 
has been given here and there — and taken, but in no 
case has anyone ceased to be an American for even the 
harshest of them. Were a foreign enemy, of whatever 
race, creed or color, to precipitate himself upon us to- 
morrow, these varied sympathies, reborn in the Euro- 
pean conflict, would die at the first call to arms. Are 
we not to be grateful for this? 

We have been spared through four months of war 
from war's death and devastation. Our prayer should 
be that we may be so led to see our duty and so 



138 HYPHENATIONS 

strengthened to the fulfillment of it, that the horrors 
of war may never visit our shores. We should seek 
the light of justice, that we may not offend: for in of- 
fence lies retribution. With the widow and the orphan 
and the homeless, helpless and stricken there can be 
no offence, and our duty lies with them. As we give 
so shall it be given to us. 

And finally, can not we who have been so mercifully 
spared through this year of Our Lord Nineteen Hun- 
dred and Fourteen offer to the Prince of Peace, in re- 
turn for what we have received at His hands, a nation's 
vow that we will wash our lives clean of war — that we 
will neither arm nor clothe nor feed it — and that when 
peace reigns again on earth we will strive with the 
strength that is in us to make it universal and eternal ? 

GERMAN ATROCITIES ABROAD. 

It is seldom at this late date that I look twice at the 
traductions of Germany and the Germans which con- 
tinue to find a prominent place in the columns of our 
daily English papers. I had thought that all that could 
be said had been said. But occasionally, even now, 
something crosses the border line of the ordinary and 
holds me, by an excess of either absurdity, venom or 
maliciously intentional inaccuracy. 

The letter of Charles Francis Adams, which a few 
days ago was cabled from England, where it had ap- 
peared in The Spectator and had been exploited as 
evidence that the sentiment of the American people is 
solidly for England in this war, and which had a large 



HYPHENATIONS 139 

run in the American papers, is such a traduction. Cer- 
tain allegations contained in this letter, I confess, 
shocked and startled me, accustomed even as I have 
become to reading defamations of Germany. 

"My friend Gen. James H. Wilson, who commanded 
the American contingent in China, assures me that the 
atrocities perpetrated by the Germans there, especially 
as respects women, were something too atrocious for 
record; and, moreover, were unblushingly acknow- 
ledged as a regular feature of warfare. Wilson on this 
point is an authority." 

These are the words of Mr. Adams. So incredible 
were they to me in the light of what I know of the Ger- 
man people and the German army, that I sought con- 
firmation of them before accepting their inferences 
as final. General Wilson was kind enough to reply to 
my inquiry with the following telegram from his home 
in Wilmington, Del., under date of the 26th instant. 

"N. Y. Staats Zeitung, New York. 

"Absence prevented earlier reply. For what I actual- 
ly did say to General Adams, refer to pages five twenty 
two, five twenty three of 'Under the Old Flag' (Ap- 
pletons) to Field Marshal von Waldersee. 

P. H. Wilson." 

The passage referred to by General Wilson as ap- 
pearing on pages 522 and 523 of his book "Under the 
Old Flag" is as follows : 

"A few weeks later in conversation with the grave 
and dignified Field Marshal von Waldersee, who had 
been chosen generalissimo of the allied forces on ac- 
count of seniority, in regard to the relative practice 



140 HYPHENATIONS 

of Europeans, Asiatics, and Americans in conducting 
warfare, I took occasion to condemn as a recrudescence 
of barbarism the wholesale practice of violence, out- 
rage and robbery which had evidently characterized the 
campaign on the part of the Europeans and Asiatics. 
In doing so I expressed the thought that, while our 
for-bears appeared to have left the customs of the Mid- 
dle Ages behind when they came to America, their 
racial kinsmen from European countries, greatly to 
my surprise, seemed to return naturally to the cruelties 
of primitive man. I frankly confessed that I could 
not understand it. To this remark the humane and 
courtly Field Marshal replied with a sigh: 'Ah, Gen- 
eral, I regret to say that Europeans, no matter whence 
they come, have never abandoned the cruel and out- 
rageous practices which you so justly condemn'." 

I ask the reader to compare the words of General 
Adams with those of General Wilson, and to say if in 
the latter he can find any justification for the former. 
I think he will reply negatively. For not only is there 
nothing in General Wilson's statement to lead one to 
segregate the German soldier in the Boxer campaign, 
on the point of the atrocious, from his colleagues in 
arms of the other European nations and of Japan, but 
rather do General Wilson's words give the benefit of 
the doubt to the Germans. The relief expedition of 
1900 was made up principally of Japanese, Russian, 
German, British, French, Italian and American troops. 
The Japanese and Americans are dealt with by Gen- 
eral Wilson himself. The European troops — "no mat- 
ter whence they come" — are one and all condemned by 



HYPHENATIONS 141 

"the humane and courtly" German Field Marshal for 
the practices so inconsistent with our own ideas— and 
condemned "with a sigh." 

A second statement in Mr. Adams' letter also chal- 
lenges attention. It is this : "When the first contingent 
of the German army was sent out on the China expe- 
dition in 1900 the Emperor personally addressed them 
in these words : 'When you meet the foe you will de- 
feat them. No quarter will be given ; no prisoners will 
be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your 
mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years ago, under 
the leadership of Attila, gained a reputation in virtue 
of which they still live in historical tradition, so may 
the name of Germany become known in such a manner 
in China that no Chinaman will ever again dare to look 
askance at a German'." 

An extensive report of this speech was cabled to the 
press of this country at the time. I have gone through 
it carefully, and fail to find anything which even sug- 
gests the words which Mr. Adams quotes. I have gone 
to great pains in the matter and I know of but one 
source from which they could have been drawn: a 
pamphlet of William Le Queux, now being circulated 
in England as an assistance to the recruiting campaign, 
which bears in large and blood-red letters the title 
"German Atrocities" and which it should be above the 
clean hands of any man of Mr. Adams' standing to 
touch. Perhaps Mr. Adams has other authority for the 
statement, but if he has he should have stated it when 
he set out to vilify the German Emperor. He still 
has an opportunity to do so. 



142 HYPHENATIONS 

I find in the "Europaischer Geschichts-Kalender" of 
1900, page 114, the speech of the Emperor as printed 
in the "Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger". It contains neither 
the words nor the sentiments expressed by Mr. Adams. 
After discussing conditions in China and the death 
of the German Minister the Emperor said: "Do 
not rest until the enemy is completely crushed, begs 
for mercy." There is no further reference to the policy 
to be pursued by the German troops in dealing with 
the Chinese. 

It should be remembered that when the German con- 
tingent alluded to left to join the international corps 
intended for the relief of the Foreign Legations in 
Peking, public feeling was running particularly high 
in Germany. The dastardly murder of the German 
Minister in the streets of Peking, while on his way to 
the Tsung-li-yamen with a message from the Diplomatic 
Body, had already been reported to the German people. 
All Germany was crying out for the revenge of not 
only the insult to the German nation but of the murder 
itself, and whatever relief might be afforded to Baron 
von Ketteler's devoted American wife. It was a time 
for men to lose their heads. The words placed by Mr. 
Adams in the mouth of the Emperor were justified 
then if ever. And yet, from all I can discover, the 
Emperor, far from losing his head and employing the 
words imputed to him, was calmly logical in his address 
to the troops. 

The vicious and unfounded allegations of Mr. Adams 
might have been passed without comment if they had 
remained in England where they belong. But when 



HYPHENATIONS 143 

they are circulated broadcast through our own country, 
where neutrality of sentiment should be nourished 
rather than undermined, they demand the same exami- 
nation and condemnation which belongs to all that pro- 
British and anti-American literature that has been 
foisted upon us recently by the intolerant and in- 
tolerably supercilious Boston School. The name which 
Mr. Adams bears is one which has been worn with 
honor in this country. He is descended — apparently 
very far descended — from a sturdy stock which made 
the revolution a possibility and a success. It was at 
the feet of an Adams that Alexander Hamilton sat, 
and then returned to New York to spread the fight 
against England and English oppression. But blood 
and sentiment thin with the years. And the Adams of 
today, like the Eliot, and the list could be filled to 
the bottom from the social register of Boston and Cam- 
bridge, seems intent upon undoing what their ancestor., 
did so well one hundred and thirty odd years ago. 
Then Boston was the hot-bed of Americanism. The 
elm under which Washington took command of the 
Continental Army in 1775 has withered to a cement- 
supported stump, and with its life has departed from 
New England all that Washington stood for. While 
the South and the West are clamoring for the truth 
about Germany, New England clings to the fetich of 
the coat-of-arms and the English tradition. It is time 
that Maine wiped the word "Dirigo" from her Great 
Seal and that Massachusetts awoke to the fact that 
there is no longer place in this country for her A 1, 
rock-ribbed, copper-bottomed narrowness, sycophancy 
and English heel-licking. 



144 HYPHENATIONS 

I called attention to the early illogical putterings of 
Harvard's President Emeritus and to his frank ad- 
mission — from his point of view — that the United 
States must go to the rescue of the Allies should they 
become exhausted in the struggle against Germany. 
All this, however, was of comparatively small import- 
ance to the American people, compared with Mr. 
Adams' letter to Lord Newton. Mr. Eliot, of course, 
has long been "quite exceptionally hopeless," and 
what he said was dignified, even if it was silly and 
misleading. But when a leading citizen of the Hub 
of America and of the Universe so far forgets himself 
as to indulge the English people with misquotations 
which are not only undignified but untrue, what are 
we to infer? When the earth shall have lost its salt, 
where shall it find it again? Can it be that the com- 
mandment "thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thy neighbor" was not meant to include Charles Fran- 
cis Adams? 

A WAR-PROOF NATION. 

The man who sits on his own roof, while the prop- 
erty of his neighbors is going up in flames and the 
burning timbers are falling all about him, crying ever 
and anon: "Oh, the horror of it all!", is a subject 
for pity rather that admiration. When the roof on 
which he sits is, however, not his own but that en- 
trusted to his keeping by an employer all the condem- 
nation attaching to criminal negligence is showered 
upon him. It is not enough for him to say: "My 



HYPHENATIONS 145 

house, or my employer's house, is fire-proof." No 
house is fire-proof. 

And no nation is war-proof. We have not even 
sanely striven to make ourselves so — and we may be 
sure that for a long time to come none of our neigh- 
bors will place themselves in that condititon. Yet 
every attempt to provide against the ravages of war 
when it is brought, as any day it may be, to our shores 
is howled down by those in whose hands we have 
placed the keeping of the nation — and the loudest by 
those highest in office. The conflagration in Europe, 
instead of affording our Government a helpful lesson 
in what we may expect when a brand is dropped in 
our midst or we drop one carelessly in the midst of 
another and warlike people, seems to have been called 
forth only that the select one may pluck a Nobel Prize 
out of the ashes of nine nations. Europe is not burn- 
ing for this ; but Europe will have been consumed in 
vain, as far as we are concerned, if we do not realize 
from what we are looking upon that only by being 
prepared to defend ourselves and hoping always that 
we may never need to employ our defences, can we 
ever aspire to lasting independence and security. 

We do not require the huge armaments of Europe. 
We have in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans allies which 
outweigh thousands of guns and hundreds of thousands 
of men. We do need, however, to supplement these 
natural defences by a military and naval establishment 
that will guarantee our shores from invasion. Com- 
pared with the needs of European nations, it is in- 
finitesimal, but it is just as vitally necessary, and will 



146 HYPHENATIONS 

remain so until the peoples of the world attain to such 
a perception of their own intrinsic worth, to para- 
phrase a sentence of Emerson, that they do not think 
property or their own bodies a sufficient good to be 
saved by such dereliction of principle as treating others 
like a herd of sheep. We want peace — for peace's 
sake itself, and for the freedom from the murder and 
the blood and stench of war and from the harrowing 
miseries of those who live to weep for the dead. We 
need peace for the proper development of our own 
social institutions and organization. A people living 
always under the shadow of invasion or the hope of 
invading, is not a free people ; but the slave to fear or 
ambition — in either case to an element extraneous to 
itself and having no place in its social or political 
philosophy. But the hour of universal peace has not 
yet struck. The lesson of these months is not less chat 
war lurks in the dark corners of the world still, than 
that world peace is an ultimate ideal which all the 
nations should strive to render concrete. But mark 
the word "ultimate". Two generations and more have 
passed since Victor Hugo presented to the International 
Peace Congress of 1849 ms conception of a United 
States of Europe and prophesied its early consum- 
mation — yet what a caricature has history made of 
these prophecies! While our voice should never be 
raised but in the cause of peace we cannot, until those 
who surround us have struck the same note, afford to 
ground our arms or turn one cannon into plowshares. 
We are not free from danger. While there is little 
to be feared from Europe and while we have outgrown 



HYPHENATIONS 147 

Canada until it has become a hostage rather than a 
menace and South America is becoming increasingly 
American, we must not forget that we have still to 
account for Asia. "Why," said Representative Gard- 
ner on the floor of Congress recently, "we have turned 
around and said to the most military nation Asia ever 
knew: 'We will have none of you within our borders'." 
And he pointed to Japan and our nearest danger. "Do 
you suppose," he continued, "a proud nation like Japan 
is going to listen with equanimity to a doctrine like 
that, unless behind that doctrine is a force, a strength 
to put that doctrine into effect?" I do not think that 
i t i s — f or very much longer, or that it would have 
listened as long as it has but for a depleted exchequer. 
The erasure of the indemnity clause from the Treaty 
of Portsmouth served more effectively than any treaty 
of arbitration engrossed in the most innocent juice ever 
expressed from the grapes of sun-kissed California 
could have done, to preserve peace thus far between 
Japan and the United States. But the most depleted 
of exchequers are refilled in time — a fact which we 
seem to overlook when we regard with complacency 
the seizure of the Ladrones and the Marshall and 
Caroline Islands, the cutting of our communications 
with the Philippines and the creation of a series of 
bases from which Japan can operate against Hawaii 
and Guam. I am told that Great Britain will hold them 
— but even if England did not herself take a hand in 
the war, what is a little matter like neutrality between 
allies ? 

We do not want war with Japan, but there is a large 



148 HYPHENATIONS 

element of the Japanese people who want war with us. 
We have not insulted them, but they feel that we have. 
The decision of the people of California and other 
States to determine for themselves under the Con- 
stitution who shall and who shall not come to live 
among them has been interpreted as an infringement 
of the assumed inalienable right of the Japanese to go 
wherever they like and there erect their standard of 
wages and living. Without offering the white man in 
Japan equality of treatment with the yellow, Japan 
demands such equality for the yellow man in the 
United States — and eventually we shall have to grant 
the demand or fight. I think we shall fight. Our 
wishes as to peace will not be consulted. Were treaties 
of peace and amity and arbitration to be signed with 
Japan until the crack of doom, they would not make the 
Japanese white; and until he has been made white he 
cannot come to live amongst us on terms of equality 
with white men. That means war, and we should be 
ready for it. 

Whether we are prepared to meet Japan or any one 
of the major powers of Europe in armed conflict is not 
the most important question of the moment. The im- 
portant question is whether or not the American people 
have a right to know if they are prepared or un- 
prepared. The other question can be answered later. 

The argument that has been used by high administra- 
tion officials against any investigation of our defences 
at present with the greatest apparent success is that 
this is an inopportune moment for any such action. 
That, in other words, our intentions might be interpret- 



HYPHENATIONS 149 

ed erroneously by the belligerent nations. The answer 
to this argument may be put in the form of another 
question: When will our intentions not be misinter- 
preted, if they stand in danger of misinterpretation 
to-day? Preparation for war with us means prepara- 
tion for defence against insult or injury or both. And 
nothing else. We are known as a people of peace. 
Will our intentions, then, if we prepare for our proper 
defence when we still have the picture of war-torn 
Europe before our eyes, stand more likely to be mis- 
understood than if we suddenly increase our army and 
navy in an hour of general peace? I think not. The 
moment is not only not inopportune; it is both op- 
portune and psychological. We know to-day what war 
is To-morrow, when it shall have ceased, we shall 
have forgotten. We should strike while the iron is 
hot in our minds. We have been invited by an eminent 
Japanese statesman to "clarify" our policy in the 
Orient. That may better wait, however, until we have 
clarified our policy at home; determined whether or 
not we are in a position to support our "clarification" ; 
and seen to it that what we lack, if anything, is 
supplied. The American people have a right to know 
these things. There is no better time than the present 
to present these facts to them. 

CONGRESS, ARMS AND AMMUNITION. 

The bill introduced by Senator Hitchcock forbidding 
the exportation from the United States to nations now 
in a state of war in Europe of arms and ammunition 



150 HYPHENATIONS 

is the first sane expression in a concrete form that 
I have seen of the principles for which this country 
supposedly stands. We have talked of peace and have 
advocated peace. We have signed treaties of arbitra- 
tion designed to lessen the chances of war. We have 
done nothing, however, to date, in a practical way to 
make war impossible or even undesirable. The Hitch- 
cock resolution offers us an opportunity to make good 
our protestations — or to throw them overboard. 

It was not to be expected that London would take 
kindly to the suggestion involved in the resolution. As 
a matter of fact, London has not taken kindly to it. 
On the other hand, she attempts to tell us that the 
resolution should not be passed because at some future 
date we may find ourselves at war with a European 
power — presumably England — and that we should then 
have to fall back upon the armories of Europe for our 
military supplies. Were we now to declare an embargo 
upon the exportation of the materials of war to assist 
the Allies in their war upon Germany, in the contin- 
gency suggested by London, Europe might refuse 
to supply us with what we might then stand in need of. 
That, however, is no argument. When the day in- 
timated by the British Government comes to pass we 
will take care of ourselves. We plan no aggressive 
war, and we can very well manufacture in this country 
all we need for our own defence. We are not only 
doing that now but are supplying Great Britain with 
much that she needs. 

As I have said, it was not to be expected that Lon- 
lon would look with favor upon the establishment by 



HYPHENATIONS 151 

the American Government of an embargo upon arms 
and ammunition. The London Times has already ex- 
pressed its opinion upon the subject, and its name- 
sake in New York has taken up the argument. This 
we did not expect. The New York Times, in its lead- 
ing article of the ioth instant, arraigns the Hitchcock 
resolution as an "unneutral embargo". The Times 
goes back a century and quotes Thomas Jefferson on 
our right to export arms and ammunition to whom- 
soever we please, whether belligerent or not, and con- 
tinues a list of authorities down almost to the present 
time. I do not challenge the Times on this point. 
I admit it. We have a perfect right to sell arms and 
ammunition and all that goes to aid, abet and assist 
war, under the terms of what is known as international 
law. The point which I wish to make, however, has 
nothing to do with our right to engage in a trade of 
this sort — which is generally admitted; but has to do 
rather with our duty to refrain from engaging in this 
sort of trade if we are to be held consistent in our 
professions of faith in the possibilities of universal 
peace and our desire for its accomplishment. We can't 
talk peace and sell arms and ammunition in, to strain 
a phrase, the same breath. 

The argument of unneutrality advanced by the Times 
is plausible but fictitious. Admitting that Great 
Britain holds command of the seas — admitting that 
under these circumstances she can draw upon the 
United States, while Germany cannot, for the sinews 
of war — can we be regarded as having committed an 
act of an unneutral nature if we determine that it is 



152 HYPHENATIONS 

most consistent with our professions and to our best 
interest not to supply any of the warring nations with 
the means of continuing a war which we nationally 
deplore? The Times is pleading the case of England. 
I am pleading that of the United States. When Eng- 
land suggested not so long ago that we take action to 
require the German vessels of war to leave American 
waters, the Times was sympathetic. When we remem- 
ber that England has naval bases in the West Indies 
and Canada from which we could not reasonably re- 
quire the British navy to retire, the unneutral element 
in the suggestion is apparent. When, too, Great 
Britain asked us to see that no contraband of war left 
our ports for a possible ultimate destination in Ger- 
many, the Times was equally sympathetic; although 
the just execution of the duties imposed upon us by 
the suggestion would have involved also the inspection 
and detention of contraband cargoes destined for Great 
Britain and the Allies. 

The Hitchcock resolution has not to do with Ger- 
many or Great Britain so much as it has to do with the 
United States. Our right to sell arms and ammunition 
to belligerents is established : our right to refuse to do 
so is equally clear. I do not attribute to Senator 
Hitchcock, in connection with the resolution which he 
introduced in the Senate, a desire to help one party 
in Europe against another. "Mr. Hitchcock," says the 
Times, "proposes that by a law passed in Congress and 
signed by the President we shall rob Great Britain, 
France and Russia of the advantage they have gained." 
He proposed nothing of the sort. Involved in his reso- 



HYPHENATIONS 153 

lution, however, is the question whether or not the 
United States wishes to enhance this advantage to the 
injury of a nation with which we are all — with the 
obvious exception of the Times — at peace. The 
fundamental sense of Senator Hitchcock's resolution 
is not what the Times would make it out to be. We 
do not want to help Germany and we do not want to 
help the Allies to carry on a war which we deplore end 
abhor. That is, I take it that we do not want to do 
anything of this sort. If nationally we do want to do 
so, let us come out frankly and say so. If we want to 
help England to crush Germany, let us not talk about 
peace but let us go at once to the open assistance of 
England — for she sorely needs assistance. If, on the 
other hand, we wish to see Germany triumph in her 
unequal struggle, let us go openly to her assistance. 
What we cannot consistently do is to talk peace, peace, 
peace, and while we are talking with our right hand, 
allow our left hand to be fashioning arms for the de- 
struction of men as human and as perfect as ourselves. 
When London tells us not to pass the Hitchcock re- 
solution London is speaking for herself and for all 
Great Britain and the Allies. She is not speaking for 
the American people ; nor is she speaking in the in- 
terests of universal peace. She wants something just 
now and if Senator Hitchcock's bill is passed she will 
b'e stopped from receiving it. We all understand Lon- 
don — and England. Why cannot we feel that we can 
equally understand our own Administration? We did 
not want to see England enter the war — for she had 
no logical • place in it. But, as I have often said be- 



154 HYPHENATIONS 

fore, that is no good reason why we should go to her 
assistance. The continuation of the exportation to the 
Allies of means and materials for continuing the war 
is but adding to a holocaust already great enough. 

We have been told by British writers that we shall 
have a seat in the Council of Nations that is to write 
the peace. An exalted seat has been promised us, as 
a matter of fact, as that which properly belongs to a 
great nation which has kept itself aloof while all the 
rest of the world was at war. But can we claim such 
a seat when we reflect that we have been as largely 
instrumental in perpetuating the strife as any of the 
combatants themselves? It is rifles and bullets that 
destroy, blankets and uniforms that clothe and horses 
that mount for destruction. We have supplied all these ; 
and remembering these things, can we appear in a 
Council of Peace and, raising up our hands for the 
relegation of war to the limbo of the past, say that our 
hands are clean? I do not think that we can. 

Without regard for the interests of this combatant 
nation or that, we have the right to stop the shipment 
abroad of articles necessary to the carrying on of the 
war, and the duty is ours to see to it that such ship 
ments cease. We were not asked if there should be 
war or not. We are suffering from the war in more 
ways than one. We have a right to look to our own 
interests, as others are looking to theirs. And in con- 
sidering these interests we must weigh a few million 
dollars against our nationally professed principles. 
The question which Senator Hitchcock has raised is : 
Shall we be Americans or shall we be colonial subjects 
of a European crown ? 



HYPHENATIONS 155 

THE BURDEN OF HUMANITY. 

We can but watch the great bleeding heart of hu- 
manity throb to the accumulation of the endless sor- 
rows which sadden it day by day — and wait — and hope. 
All that we had prayed for during the last few en- 
couraging years in the way of the brotherhood of man 
and a lasting and assured peace has seemingly perished 
in the shambles on the plains of Flanders and Poland. 

We cannot look forward to the spring and the flow- 
ers and to the re-birth of life when it is to be accom- 
plished by so terrible a toll of death. War knows no 
seasons. It is a perpetual harvest of sorrow and de- 
struction. It is indeed an optimist who can find a 
shred of hope in all this gloom. 

Each one of us has been apportioned his share of 
the sacred load of humanity. Our responsibility is in 
direct proportion to our ability in carrying forward the 
work of humanity towards its destined goal. Previous 
to the war, millions of human beings in Europe were 
marching shoulder to shoulder, steadily and surely, 
along the road to a better and nobler day. Happiness, 
like a cloth of gold, was being spun to stretch from 
the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the At- 
lantic to the crests of the Ural Mountains. The cause 
of freedom and of social betterment was progressing, 
if not fast enough to satisfy the most impatient social- 
ists, at least advancing within the steady bounds of 
liberalism. Some of us had even perceived broad rifts 
in the clouds of militarism and autocratic feudalism 
that has blanketed the international development of 
peace and good-will among men. 



156 HYPHENATIONS 

How doomed to disappointment have we been. The 
majority praying for peace have been powerless in the 
hands of the minority cursing us with war. We 
dreamed the dream of a sweeter day to come, and 
awoke to the realization of a brutal dawn. The women 
of Europe are crucified with the sorrows of Mary. 
We, who hoped to find our sons sharing the benefits 
of universal peace — we see them dying with the stamp 
of hatred and the lust of blood upon their swollen, 
distorted faces. No matter how we, in paradoxical man- 
ner, attempt to clothe the victims of war with a halo 
of patriotism and heroism — we know that in hurrying 
millions of young lives before the judgment seat of the 
Almighty we cannot deceive Him with this frail de- 
lusion. One cannot storm the citadel of heaven with 
the blood of one's fellow man still warm and red upon 
his hands. One cannot look upon an eternal vision of 
serenity with the lust of killing still seamed upon his 
face. 

It is not a lovely thing to view the great eternity of 
humanity with one's soul blackened and shrunken with 
the indelible stamp of war. 

We have cast aside the burden of mankind. For 
each step we have been stumbling forward, each step 
won with such infinite pains and sacrifice, we are now 
hurrying backwards at a pace that numbs the heart. 
How we shall have to fight to regain this lost ground ! 
Our sons and our sons' sons will be forced to stagger 
under the burden that a few in an insane moment have 
placed upon them all. 

Christmas is approaching, but the carols of that sac- 



HYPHENATIONS 157 

red day will be muffled with the ache of a million 
broken hearts. The terror of it is with us all the day 
and all the night. There is a day of reckoning to come, 
when the books will be balanced and then God pity 
those whom humanity shall hold responsible for this 

sacrifice. 

Allow me to conclude with Miss Gertrude C. Hop- 
kins' excellent lines taken from the Cranford (N. J.) 

Chronicle. 

Death Masks. 
You say that the white of his face in the darkness 
gleamed strangely, 
As touched by a light 
That is given alone to those who die greatly, whose 
honor 
Gave all for the right; 
You bring me his sword and his sash and the message 
of comrades. 
All that they knew 
Of the last of the hours that he spent on this earth, 
me, his mother — 
You comfort me so . 

And I tell you you lie ! 

I tell you the last that he knew of this earth was its 
hatred and anger ; 
Blood blinded his eyes; 
What gleamed white in the dark was the tightly- 
clenched teeth of his raging; 
Cursing: the skies. 



168 HYPHENATIONS 

For his face was as blackened, awry, as the soul they 
tore from him, 

Hurled to God's feet. 
A devil, the horrible madness of murder upon him — - 

My son who was so sweet! 

ORANGE PEEL. 

When George Bernard Shaw peeled the yellow off 
the French diplomatic correspondence and laid bare its 
inner fallacies, he did an act of kindness to the world 
and to France. A country cannot thrive on miscon- 
ceptions or misstatements. But one can readily see the 
opening to which he exposed himself in so doing, to 
the attacks of those interested in the perpetuation of 
untruths. 

A great deal of " fool-pidgin" has been written 
around the white, blue, gray, yellow and neutral-hued 
"papers" that have been given to the world on this 
war, its causes and the reasons for it. The republica- 
tion of these documents in this country has been of 
value from the point of view of amusement — but his- 
torically they are interesting only in that they show 
how well those who rule .us feel "what fools these mor- 
tals be." I cannot see why the Allies should not have 
pooled their cases and sent them forth on one and the 
same day. As it is, they have been served out to us 
with the intervallic regularity of speeches in a debate. 
Only, there has been but one affirmative. The British, 
Russian, Belgian and, now, the French papers, have 
appeared, — each taking up the futile attempt at rebut- 



HYPHENATIONS 159 

ting the flaws discovered in its immediate predecessor. 
We may hope, perhaps, that the French "yellow book" 
will close this silly contest to convince us of what we 
very well know or should not be convinced. I do not 
suppose that all diplomatic history contains a parallel 
blow at the good sense of the world at large. It is prob- 
able that the future will not repeat it; for this war 
should relegate the thing we know as "secret diplom- 
acy" — and it is secret diplomacy that breeds white 
and gray and yellow books — to the same limbo as war 
itself. 

The French "yellow book" falls quite within the ca- 
tegory of the other collections of diplomatic correspon- 
dence that have been given us. They all seek to hide 
the truth beneath a mantle of prevarication. And when 
one who cares not for the mantle but for what it hides, 
tears the mantle aside and exposes what we know is 
the truth, the weavers of fiction fall upon, rend and 
malign him. I have read Shaw the Dramatist and Shaw 
the Socialist, and I confess to a liking for both. Both 
men write the truth as they see it and both look to- 
ward the future. I do not discern in Mr. Shaw's stric- 
tures on England the justifiable blasphemy of an Irish- 
man suffering from his country's wrongs. I can dis- 
cover in them only an attempt to open the eyes of not 
only England and the United Kingdom but of the 
world to the fact that unless this war remedies the de- 
fects in the British system — wipes out England's hypo- 
critical attitude to her own and to the own of other 
countries — it will have been waged in vain for the 
world and for England. 



160 HYPHENATIONS 

It is fashionable these days to speak of Mr. Shaw as 
a mountebank or as a characterless master of a master- 
ful pen. The New York Times, for instance, remarks : 
"It would b'e a pity if the picture he has so vigorously 
drawn should be accepted." It would be a thousand 
pities if it should not be. Mr. Shaw is neither a moun- 
tebank nor a characterless wielder of the quill. He is 
a well equipped and profound thinker, and one who 
loves his fellow men. He is less a subject of Great 
Britain than a citizen of the world; and as such can 
place man above money or minorities. And doing so, 
he cannot overlook the shortcomings of government 
which, in England no less than on the Continent, make 
for the repression of the movement toward that newer 
freedom of man which he sees with prophetic eye. 

A plebescite would never have thrown England and 
the British Empire into the present war. An oligarchy 
has. This is what Mr. Shaw sees — what we might all 
see if many of us had not closed our eyes when the 
war opened. He saw the British lion crouching, as 
Perris saw it when he wrote : "Thus, from the founda- 
tion of British diplomacy by Henry VII, England was 
engaged for centuries in a shrewd game of beggar-my- 
neighbour with the three great Powers of the Conti- 
nent, France, Spain and the Empire, taking a partner 
now on one side, then on the other, and always for a 
prize." He saw it under Edward VII preparing for 
the spring. With the vision of a Liberalist, the alliance 
of the oligarchy of England with the oligarchy of Rus- 
sia could have meant nothing else to him. He now 
sees that the lion has sprung — and he says so. That 
is all there is to Mr. Shaw's philosophy. 



HYPHENATIONS 161 

Six years ago — nay six months ago — he was preach- 
ing the gospel of man vs. minority. Then he was a 
"socialist." When six weeks ago he preached the same 
cause he was denounced, as he is to-day, as a traitor 
in England and by the New York Times as the in- 
carnation of the "dramatic faculty." What Mr. Shaw 
seeks to accomplish, if I have read him rightly, is to 
have the power of war creation removed from the 
nands of the few and rendered into those of the many. 
Is there any sane man on this side of the Atlantic or 
on the other, for that matter, who does not desire the 
same thing? I do not think there can be. It is only 
when war is made by those — and by those alone — who 
bear its burden, will it cease to be made at all. It does 
not matter whether the few is King or Kaiser, Czar or 
President, an oligarchy based on wealth alone or on 
wealth and birth combined — no man or no few men 
can safely be entrusted with the power of involving 
millions in war. They have done so, however, within 
six months. 

The war which we are now witnessing is a stand of 
oligarchy against democracy — and Mr. Shaw wishes to 
make it the last. Are we, who more than all others 
want peace, to scoff at him for this? Are we to stickle 
at his style — when he gives us the truth? Brilliancy 
is usually a virtue — but the Times attempts to make 
it a vice. England has not yet gotten through the style 
of Carlyle to an appreciation of his worth. But this is 
not unnatural. It is said to take an idea thirty years — 
or is it twenty? — to cross the North Sea going west- 
ward. Let us hope it will not take anything like that 



HYPHENATIONS 

long for Mr. Shaw's ideas to cross the Atlantic. They 
come from the sanest man writing in Great Britain to- 
day with the conviction that truth is not for an hour 
but for all time — to be giver. . orld at the sun- 

d of war as well as at the sunrise of pc 

COUNSELLING GERMANY. 

resident Wilson. g the outbreak of 

ssued a formal proclamation of neu- 
trality and added to it the informal suggestion which 
me to be referred to as "higher neutral 
American press was loud in its pra ses both the 
formally official and the personally informal acts of the 
President. A certain portion of this press has found 
it to its interest, apparently, to withdraw from this po- 

: openly and belligerently wit/, 
pre.— 3rd in the proces - : 

translation from neutrality to unneutr :ken 

York rimes . the 15th instant, in its 
leacr - 7 r the German People. Peace with Free- 
dorr. 

~t _ reasoned and strainedly argued ap- 
peal of England to the German-American to counsel 
the German nation in the ways in which it should go 
old be innocuous if it could be confined to the Ameri- 
can reading public. But it cannot be — and has not 
been. Il ady in Germany and carrying with it, 

perhaps, the impression which London desires it to 
carry. The insinuation which goes with the editorial 
that the Germans in this countrv wish in anv wav to 



HYPHENATIONS 163 

influence the German people in Germany or to criti- 
cise their institutions, their ideals or their acceptance 
and conduct of the war is one which requires the im- 
mediate repudiation of the American people. Ameri- 
cans one and all, whether of German or other extrac- 
tion, have no interest in these things which lead to con- 
demnation. The British people have. I can readily 
understand why England wishes to make it appear to 
Germany that the American nation, and especially that 
portion of it which has sprung from German flesh and 
bone, is not in sympathy with the German cause. The 
establishment of this opinion in Germany would be 
worth more than "two army corps to Kitchener." And 
England does not care what it would mean to us. The 
"Cologne Gazette" intimated some days ago the ex- 
tent of the injury which the British propaganda in the 
American press has already done us among a friendly 
people. The enthusiasm with which the press of Eng- 
land has taken up the London-inspired leader under 
reference will serve only to enhance this injury. It 
is cabled to Italy and to Scandinavia and to the other 
neutral peoples of the world. Added to and misrepre- 
sented as an expression of American opinion, it will 
carry a weight with certain elements among these peo- 
ples which could not attach to a leader from any Eng- 
lish journal. The insidiousness of England's methods 
is apparent. 

I know enough of the temper of the German people 
to know that whatever advice the Xew York Times 
offers it in the sense of its editorial of December 15th 
will fall upon sterile ears. It will do Germany no 



164 HYPHENATIONS 

harm — but it will and does harm us. And that is why 
we should let it be known to Germany and to her ene- 
mies, once and for all, that there is no such thing as 
"an American opinion" on the merits of this war and 
that there cannot be, and that, for this reason, any re- 
presentation to this effect is a misrepresentation of 
the facts. I think it one of the safest signs of our per- 
petual abstention from the political affairs of Europe 
that our opinion is and must ever be divided on the 
questions involved in them. We wish to remain on 
terms of friendship with all. The political theories 
of Europe differ from our own, in some countries more 
than in others. But they have all served their purpose 
and it is not for us to judge them. Judging them, how- 
ever, or not judging them, there is one thing we can- 
not tolerate and that is the misrepresentation of our 
opinions by any country to the injury of ourselves. 

The German people have always given us their 
friendship. They have had and have ours. The at- 
tempt, therefore, to make it appear that they have not 
is a gratuitous assumption by Great Britain of a privi- 
lege unwritten in the laws of war and the exercise of 
which can only redound to our own loss. With the 
characteristic indifference to the rights of any and all 
but England which has ever figured in the policies of 
her Government she is now attempting to undermine 
a friendship quite the most valuable which we have. 
A paper printed in New York and purporting to be 
a representative spokesman for the American people 
aids and abets England in this nefarious design. 

There can come no good out of allowing that in fin- 



HYPHENATIONS 165 

itesimal portion of the American press which is con- 
trolled by London to misrepresent American opinion 
abroad. I do not deny that there are blocks of senti- 
ment in New York and in New England solidly for 
the Allies. West of the Alleghanies there are not. The 
great West and Middle West are still open in sympathy 
and to conviction. This rankles in a quarter where it 
can do us most harm. A great victory has been won 
in Poland. The battles about Lodz will probably go 
down as among the decisive successes of history. We 
hear nothing of them — for London and Petrograd do 
not wish us to. The creation of the impression in this 
country that Germany is waging a losing war is but 
the preliminary to attempting to convince those who 
sympathize with Germany that it is their duty to coun- 
sel her to "peace with freedom." England tells us 
what she wants us to know of Germany and tells Ger- 
many, through certain American papers, what she 
wants her to think of us. I do not think that the Ger- 
man people are to be fooled more than we are. Were 
our sympathies to those of the last man, woman and 
child, to be thrown against her — which is exactly the 
opposite of what will ever happen — she would go on 
fighting in a cause which she knows, as we must, is 
just. The British campaign is doing Britain no good — 
and we are to pay the bill. When peace once more re- 
turns to the Continent of Europe we do not want to 
feel that we have injured anyone of the peoples whose 
friendship we shall then wish to claim. Can we allow 
ourselves to be made the tool of Great Britain against 
Germany — and then go before Germany and say that 



166 HYPHENATIONS 

we have not injured her? The German people will 
achieve "peace with freedom" whatever our counsel to 
them might be. We have no counsel — for they do not 
need it; but if we had it would be to continue to do 
exactly what they have done and are doing. 

PULPIT AND PRESCIENCE. 

A great deal of unnecessary importance has been 
ascribed, in my opinion, to the sermon preached by the 
Reverend Newell Dwight Hillis from Plymouth Pul- 
pit, Brooklyn, last Sunday night. The assertion of Dr. 
Hillis should be taken at par and not a premium. We 
all say what we think, and Dr. Hillis is amongst and 
of us. The fact that he occupies an historical incum- 
bency means nothing. The fact that he has lectured 
on Germany "for the last five years" means nothing. 
The opinions which he has expressed are his own per- 
sonal opinions — the opinions of an individual man, 
which have nothing at all to do with his holy calling, 
and which may be challenged by anyone who feels dif- 
ferently from Dr. Hillis. I have the greatest respect 
for Dr. Hillis, as I had for Henry Ward Beecher and 
Lyman Abbott, who preceded him in the same pulpit. 
Dr. Hillis is a learned scholar. He has studied Ger- 
many and lectured upon the lessons which we in the 
United States might learn from her. He has, there- 
fore, a right to speak on Germany in the present war 
without being "heckled" by those who cannot agree 
with his point of view. 

When, however, any pulpit is turned into a political 



HYPHENATIONS 167 

rostrum it opens itself to the challenge of those who 
cannot subscribe to the views which it expounds. I 
think it unfortunate that the Times should have seized 
upon Dr. Hillis' address to buttress its leader "For 
the German People, Peace with Freedom." It intro- 
duces an extraneous element which has no place, ap- 
parently, in Dr. Hillis' position or in the position of 
those who cannot agree with him. 

The argument of Dr. Hillis is open to free discus- 
sion by those who do not see in Germany the menace 
which Dr. Hillis claims to discern. "I was for Germany 
five months ago," says Dr. Hillis. "For five years I 
had been lecturing on the lessons we might learn from 
Germany. But I have changed my mind. I have seen 
that I was mistaken. It was only in the middle of Sep- 
tember that I realized what a German success would 
mean to the world— how there could be nothing else 
but a world of armed camps; how we, in this country, 
too, would have to adopt militarism in order to live." 
These words are not taken from Dr. Hillis' sermon 
but from his subsequent interview in regard to it. They 
are referred to as emphasizing the statements of the 
sermon itself. 

There is no law in this country against changing 
one's opinion. When, however, one who stands in Dr. 
Hillis' position and proclaims as his excuse for dis- 
cussing the Germany of to-day the fact that he believed 
in Germany for five years and lectured upon the les- 
sons which we might learn from her, it behooves him 
to give his reasons for the volte face involved in the as- 
sertion that a triumphant Germany would be a menace 



168 HYPHENATIONS 

to the world; that even in this country we shall have 
to live by militarism alone. The reason has apparently 
been given, and amounts to this: "This is an age of 
steel. Without hematite iron deposits Germany can- 
not build her steamships, her railways, her factories. 
German engineers have been saying for five years that 
another five years would see Germany's iron ex- 
hausted. A short time ago French engineers discov- 
ered the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe. 
The German army is now within twenty-five miles of 
those coveted mines, and if the army fails to take them 
and the Germans lose the war, then Germany will be 
reduced to a second-rate power industrially and politi- 
cally. Germany wants to supersede England on the 
seas, and Germany wants the iron mines of France, 
and this is the whole situation in a nutshell." 

The nutshell and the situation which it encloses are, 
however, of Dr. Hillis' creation. Admitted, that, as 
the Times takes pains to point out, "like Dr. Eliot and 
Charles Francis Adams and President Butler and 
President Hibb'en, Dr. Hillis is a representative Ameri- 
can," I still hold that there are other "representative 
Americans" many of whom see more in this war than 
the desire of Germany for the hematite iron mines of 
France — which are not worth to Germany an army 
corps. She has already lost in the neighborhood of 
fifteen. Allow me, therefore, to quote a few other 
Americans — and quite as purely such as Dr. Hillis — 
on the causes of the war. 

While Dr. Hillis was presenting his views to his 
congregation in Brooklyn, Dr. Thomas C. Hall, Pro- 



HYPHENATIONS 169 

fessor of Christian Ethics in the Union Theological Se- 
minary, was uttering in St. James Church these words : 
"The real cause of the war, from the German view- 
point, are to be found deep in the roots of European 
history. They believe that the war is the real outcome 
of the bold and aggressive policy of the Russian Em- 
pire, based chiefly on the known desire of Russia, as 
many other Germans think also, for an ice-free port. 
Servia has been her willing tool. Russia desires to 
crush Austria because that country defeated Russia's 
Balkan policy. Russia is also attacking Germany be- 
cause Russia dreads the influence of Germany's de- 
mocracy and social thought on the fate of the Russian 
oligarchy. England has, with France, taken the side 
of Russia to crush a commercial competitor." 

I give you, as well, the view of Professor John W. 
Burgess: "I knew (in 1907) that there was only one 
thing which could rescue Germany from a combined 
attack upon her by Great Britain, France and Russia, 
sooner or later, and that one thing must be a repre- 
sentation by the United States to Great Britain that 
an alliance between Great Britain, France and Russia 
was an unnatural thing, dangerous to the peace of the 
world and injurious to the interests of the United 
States." 

I give you, too, Professor George Stuart Fullerton, 
of Columbia University, who has known Germany and 
Austria for the last thirty years. Says Professor Ful- 
lerton : "I saw without hesitation that no class, either 
in Germany or in Austria, desired to percipitate this 
terrible war. Peace was desired, and earnestly desired, 



170 HYPHENATIONS 

for economic reasons. But war was forced upon both 
nations. That the war came just when it did may be 
regarded as an accident, for the war was sure to come 
in any case." 

I give you, finally, though many other "representa- 
tive Americans" could be quoted in a like sense, 
Judge Grosscup, than whom there is no American bet- 
ter qualified to judge of the situation. "What led 
France and England to back Russia, wrong," says 
Judge Grosscup, "in this Austria-Hungary matter 
against Germany, right, was, undoubtedly, their appre- 
hension that Germany successful over Russia would be 
Germany not simply pre-eminent, but preponderant, 
both politically and economically, among the nations of 
the Continent." 

It will be observed that in the opinions of the Ameri- 
cans which I have quoted, Americans with the same 
right to speak on the subject as Dr. Hillis, and in every 
case as well, if not better, qualified than he to address 
the American people on the subject, the "hematite iron 
mines of France" do not figure largely as a cause of 
the present war. I think that the American people 
will conclude with me that Dr. Hillis has chosen a very 
narrow reason for changing the convictions of "five 
years" in regard to Germany. As his subsequent dila- 
tion upon German militarism was based apparently up- 
on his assumed reason for the war, it may be dismissed 
without comment. 

I do not wish to give the impression that I have not 
the highest regard for the sincerity and ableness of 
Dr. Hillis — for I have regard for both. I do not be- 



HYPHENATIONS 171 

lieve that any man could succeed Henry Ward Beecher 
and Lyman Abbott in the pulpit of Plymouth Church 
without being a good pulpit man. A principle of the 
Liberal faith holds, however, that a man may be de- 
fective in one sense and yet helpful to the state in an- 
other. Conversely, a man may be helpful to the state 
in one way and not necessarily so in other ways. A 
good minister may be a very poor interpreter of Ger- 
many. Dr. Hillis has given us his views. So have other 
equally representative Americans. We must choose 
between them. Apparently Dr. Hillis has fallen under 
the spell of England. I cannot help recalling that there 
was a time when the incumbent of the same pulpit at- 
tempted, at the behest of President Lincoln, to bring 
England to her senses. I allude to Henry Ward Beech- 
er, who went to England during the War of the States 
to' attempt to adjust British opinion to the truth. Only 
partial success attended his efforts. The American 
who is interested in knowing what the English people, 
whom Dr. Hillis now holds up to us as the opposite of 
the Germans, thought of the man of whom we think 
most, will find it in "The Education of Henry Adams." 
The following words are taken from this diary of the 
son and secretary of the then American Minister to 
the Court of St. James. "London was altogether be- 
side herself on one point," wrote Mr. Adams, "in 
especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave 
it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed 
another demon, if possible more devilish, and called it 
Mr. Seward. In regard to these two men English so- 
ciety seemed demented. Defense was useless ; explana- 



172 HYPHENATIONS 

tion was vain. One could only let the passion exhaust 
itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as ene- 
mies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and 
Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular faith. 

"Thackeray's voice trembled and his eyes filled with 
tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his hirelings 
was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals 
made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of 
women — particularly of women — in order to punish 
their opponents. On quite insufficient evidence he 
burst into reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his 
pocket the proofs that the reproach was unjust, he 
would have gained nothing by showing them. At that 
moment Thackeray, and all London society with him, 
needed the nervous relief of expressing emotion; for 
if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what 
were they?" 

It is apparent that Dr. Hillis stands in need of this 
same "nervous relief of expressing emotions." It 
should not be denied him. Only it should be remem- 
bered that even in Plymouth Pulpit, which for years 
has been associated with political and social discus- 
sion, the man who leaves the gospel to preach politics 
removes his robes before he does so. Dr. Hillis' re- 
marks carry with them the weight of an intelligent 
American — and nothing else. As such they must be 
weighed in the balance with the opinions of other 
equally intelligent Americans. Weighed thus, they are 
found wanting. 



HYPHENATIONS 173 

XMAS THOUGHTS. 

There are evidences of a white Christmas ; the snow- 
flakes are flying and the Xmas Carols will mingle with 
the merry sleigh-bells. It is too much, however, to 
hope that we will celebrate a merry Christmas to-day. 
Those of us whose thoughts will stray to the Father- 
land and the saddened Christmas gatherings around 
the jeweled trees will wonder when our beloved Ger- 
many will ever again enjoy the happiness of peace. Will 
it be to-morrow, or must days or months or years 
elapse before the nations will understand that they can- 
not crush the proud spirit that animates the entire Teu- 
tonic world. Or will it be to-morrow or days or months 
or years before German arms triumphant will decide 
the peace that has already been too long in the coming. 

The Christmas festival is essentially Teutonic in ori- 
gin. I believe that the idea of "peace on earth and 
good-will to men^gave rise to the first Christmas cele- 
brations in the German forests fifteen hundred years 
ago. Scarcely a German family to-day but has its 
tree, scarcely a family but gathers its members from 
the four corners of the earth to celebrate its re-union 
around the Christmas tree. 

Four millions of German soldiers will gather in the 
trenches to celebrate a martial Christmas. It was im- 
possible, even for a day, to win a truce in this desperate 
war. The business of killing cannot be stopped for a 
few short hours. The Pope with all the influence of 
the great organization of the Catholic Church could 



174 HYPHENATIONS 

not prevail against the military necessities of the many 
nations. 

What a gloomy picture for us to dwell upon. It is 
fifty years since we last spent a Christmas Day under 
the shadow of a great war. Let us hope that another 
fifty years at least will pass before Europe shall find 
itself saddened as it is to-day. 

A year ago the German Emperor was the recipient 
of messages of cheer and comfort from every capital 
in Europe. It is indeed strange that in the short space 
of five months all that was good and noble and great 
in German life and German thought seems to have been 
forgotten by her enemies. Yesterday the German uni- 
versities attracted the talent and genius of the world, 
to-day German intellectual life is vilified by the very 
ones who so recently considered themselves privileged 
to be able to enjoy the spirit of German culture. So 
war blinds reason. Much that has been written against 
Germany is not believed even by those whose pens have 
been most violent in their denunciations. Everything 
is unfair in war. 

The law of compensation demanded a reaction in 
this country after the bitter tirade to which Germany 
was subjected at the hands of British writers. The 
pendulum of public opinion has reached, I believe, its 
furthest point from the center of fair play. It is swing- 
ing back along the course of justice. It is too much 
to hope that it will ever remain fixed at the dead center 
of impartiality and absolute neutrality. 

This war has served one purpose in America. It 
has brought those of German blood into a closer bond 



HYPHENATIONS 175 

of sympathy. It has united those who should long ago 
have stood shoulder to shoulder. Many who had for- 
gotten the traditions of German life felt a new and 
sudden pulse of sympathy for Germany. Others from 
a tacit understanding of the great problems of the 
Fatherland found themselves patriots. The vast ma- 
jority of German sympathizers now realize the bond of 
common ancestry. 

It is difficult to describe the bitterness which Ger- 
mans feel at the attitude of a certain portion of our 
press. It is easy to understand the reason for it. It 
is in the main an outrage to their sense of fair play. 
In German families, in German societies it is the one 
theme of discussion. And the inevitable conclusion is 
invariably "but it is all so unfair." 

We German sympathizers must be patient. Our load 
is light compared to that under which the German na- 
tion is staggering. Our families are gathered about the 
tree — and none is missing. If some of the editorial 
writers of our New York press and Dr. Hillis were 
to steal upon any one of a hundred thousand German- 
American homes to-day in New York, and similar hun- 
dreds of thousands of homes throughout the country, 
they would hear the melody of "OTannenbaum" ming- 
led with the martial strains of "Deutschland, Deutsch- 
land iiber alles," and we would not read so much silly 
nonsense about prying loose the devotion and loyalty 
of the German sympathizers towards Germany. 

These people write the way they do because they 
do not understand. It seems hopeless to try and give 
them our point of view. Not satisfied with their own 



176 HYPHENATIONS 

they would prescribe their ideas, their theories, their 
beliefs for us. The German bazaar would have opened 
their eyes — but they were not there. German meetings 
or concerts or, in fact, any assemblage of German sym- 
pathizers would convince them of the utter futility and 
hopelessness of their plea. Let us forgive them and 
forget them. 

Let me extend a word of Christmas cheer to my 
many readers. Germany is doing wonders. No nation 
has ever made a nobler sacrifice and won greater vic- 
tories. In another twelve months I believe that trium- 
phant Germany and Austria will celebrate a Christmas 
of peace over a greater Teutonic Empire. In the mean- 
time let us not be discouraged by the false reports 
which fill a hostile press. Such reports do not change 
the course of events by a hairbreadth. We, German 
sympathizers, like the great German nation must stand 
shoulder to shoulder and fight for the fair name of 
Germany. That is our duty and our right. 

"WAR AGAINST THE BARBARIANS." 

I have before me a copy of the Illustrated London 
News of Saturday, February nth, 1854. 

The leading article is entitled "The War Against 
the Barbarians." The present campaign waged against 
Germany and the German Emperor is but an echo of 
the vilification which was hurled against Russia at 
that time. 

"The publication of the two interesting and import- 
ant Blue Books . . . effectually removed many errors 



HYPHENATIONS 177 

and uncertainties from the public mind. The rise, pro- 
gress and present state of the Russian aggression 
against Turkey have been fully stated . . . Englishmen 
have now no reason to suspect that the Statesmen who 
have successively administered the affairs of this coun- 
try from 1850 to the present time ever betrayed the 
high trust reposed in them. It is proved, at last, that 
they have never acted with subserviency to the wicked 
designs of the Emperor of Russia . . . More important 
State Papers were never given to the world. Every- 
thing in them is fair and open ... It is evident that the 
conduct of the ministers and diplomatists of England 
has been prudent yet patriotic . . . They were slow to 
believe that a crowned Emperor could say that which 
was not and that a man who had given repeated proofs 
to Europe of sagacity and of moderation, could all at 
once belie his character and commence a crusade 
against Mohammedanism, for the sake of territory, 
even although the penalty of the act should be war 
against all the civilized states of Europe ... In every 
stage of these long negotiations he (the Czar) stands 
condemned. Wherever such a thing as public opinion 
exists, public opinion has declared against him. What- 
ever may be their form of government, the people of 
every European state are opposed to ambition so ne- 
farious, and every selfishness so abominable. The in- 
stinct as well as the reason of nations is alarmed, and 
the Czar stands without a friend before the supreme 
tribunal of mankind. 

"There are many names in history that are never 
mentioned without disfavour and condemnation. Ii. 



178 HYPHENATIONS 

this black list the present Emperor of Russia promises 
to stand pre-eminent. The memory of the first Napo- 
leon will shine like that of an angel of light in com- 
parison with the blackness of guilt which will enshroud 
that of Nicholas. The one had many national and high 
excuses for his ambition, the other has none but the 
meanest and the most personal. He is the most selfish 
of warmakers that modern times ever saw. To find 
his parallel, we must look to the dim traditions of sav- 
age ages. Civilized nations show nothing like him. 

"The question has often been asked, 'Is the Emperor 
Nicolas in his right mind?' (Sir Gilbert Parker please 
take notice). If he were a sane man, it is likely that 
he would yet finds means to extricate himself and his 
country from the perils that a war will bring upon both. 

"Yet though it is highly probable that the Emperor 
will persevere in his projects, and that the war will 
be a disastrous one, we cannot imagine that it will be 
disastrous either to Turkey, or to the Allies who have 
honestly and fearlessly resolved to fight it out. . . The 
Allies take upon themselves the high office of the jud- 
ges of European law, and the executioners of its jus- 
tice. . . It must not be forgotten in the calculation of 
chance against the Emperor, that the restoration of the 
ancient kingdom of Poland has long been considered 
necessary. . . It may be urged, that it is possible the 
Czar will yield at the last moment, and sue for peace 
on the best conditions he can make. Such a result is 
possible, but not probable. If the Emperor be so pru- 
dent, the prestige of his power will be lost, and Russia 
will be disgraced in the eyes of a people as proud as 



HYPHENATIONS 179 

they are barbarous. In such a case, Nicolas will never 
again have it in his power to trouble the peace of the 
world. A pre-emptory demand for his abdication 
would be the least of the perils that would threaten 
him." 

And this is the Russia to which England is allied 
to-day by bonds closer than the English people know ! 
This the Russia for which thousands of Englishmen 
are going to their graves in Belgium and France ! The 
short space of sixty years — short when we measure it 
in terms of race history — has wrought a remarkable 
change. "Adam-zad" is no longer "the bear that 
stands like a man !" The lion and the bear have found 
the same bed. 

Is there not a lesson in all this for us? Are we to 
blind ourselves to the hypocrisy of a nation which but 
sixty years ago could write as it wrote of Russia — 
and has written more recently in a much stronger 
strain — and yet will ally itself to that same Russia in 
an effort to crush the highest civilization of Europe? I 
confess, when I reflect upon these facts and upon the 
dream which a great many Americans are solacing 
themselves with that England stands for a rejuvenated 
Europe, a feeling akin to chagrin. I can see but one 
Russia — the Russia of the British mind of 1854, which 
has not advanced one verst in the meantime — but I can 
see many Englands. The latest avatar was developed 
by Edward VII and Sir Edward Grey. 

When we reflect upon the questions involved in the 
present war we must remember that as a military unit 
is not stronger than its weakest member, the Allies 



180 HYPHENATIONS 

are not more advanced than their least advanced com- 
ponent part. We may throw our sympathies with 
England when she wars upon the Zulus or the Afriti — 
for there can be no doubt that hers is the superior 
civilization. When, however, she wars upon Germany 
with Russia for her strongest ally, may we logically 
do the same? I do not think there is anyone in this 
country or in the advanced countries of Europe who 
wishes to see German influence crushed out of Europe 
that Russians influence may take its place. That, 
however, is what England is striving at the present 
moment to accomplish. 

Old England takes to bed with her from time to 
time varied and various playmates — and comes up 
smiling the next morning to ask the approbation of 
the world. The enemy of yesterday is the friend of 
to-day. Will the world stand for this forever ? There 
must be some standard by which to judge nations as 
individuals. The Russian nation has been judged by 
England and by ourselves. Shall we, at the behest of 
England's temporary necessities, alter what we have 
thought of Russia? I think not. Standing together, 
iUigland and Russia will fall together. 

A man is known by the company he keeps. A nation 
cannot escape the same test. We cannot think of 
England in her war upon Germany other than as 
championing the seventeenth-century culture of her 
ally. As Kipling has attempted to extricate himself 
from the arms of Adam-zad, so England would like 
to be free from the strictures which she herself has 
written around Russia. But the impossible cannot be 



HYPHENATIONS 181 

accomplished. We know that a nation that will ally 
itself with Russia against Germany is ready to accept 
Russian domination — if it can be effected — in Berlin, 
and with such a nation we can have no sympathy. 

"WHAT HAVE I DONE TO-DAY?" 

It is well for those Americans of German extraction 
to ponder on the many grave problems which confront 
them owing to the war. The drift of public opinion 
driven by a press unfriendly towards Germany requires 
a closer bond of sympathy between the friends of 
Germany. As the day draws nearer the Allies, hard 
pressed, forced by their necessities, will demand of 
the United {States even a more active co-operation than 
they are receiving at the present time. Against that 
day we must be organized to fight. Each single 
and individual German residing in the United States 
or the descendant of a German must play his or her 
part in preaching the gospel of German justice and 
German fair play. Let an endless chain of discussion 
help to swing the balance back in favor of the cause 
we know to be just. There must be no shirkers, no 
drones in this campaign. The responsibility lies evenly 
on every one of you. We cannot resort to conscrip- 
tion but must rely upon universal service of a voluntary 
character. 

Let each German sympathizer ask himself every 
night : "What have I done this day to aid in correcting 
the false impressions which have been circulated in 
regard to German ideals and Germany?" After all, 



182 HYPHENATIONS 

that is what we are striving for. We want no unfair 
advantage but we wish to be understood. Do not rely 
upon a few leaders and feel that the German cause 
rests solely in their hands. There are powerful voices 
raised against us and none should try to shift the bur- 
den to another. 

There are over two thousand German societies of 
one kind or another in Greater New York. Practically 
every German-speaking American, as well as thousands 
of others in New York, are members of one or more of 
these societies. Similarly in each great town, the Ger- 
mans and their descendants have proved loyal to the 
traditions upon which their lives are based. These 
societies form strong rallying points for a campaign of 
education. It is greatly to the credit of the Germans 
that this immense power has never been used in a po- 
litical way to the detriment of any man. 

The German newspapers are after all but the ser- 
vants which minister to the needs of the membership 
of these German societies. Let a German newspaper 
offend by act or word and the result is its sure de- 
struction. I speak as a publisher of considerable ex- 
perience when I say that there is no power among Ger- 
man circles in the United States, no single German 
newspaper or group of papers, which can lead the Ger- 
man-speaking people in the United States in any chan- 
nel save that in which it is urged by feelings of love 
and patriotism for the United States and love and pat- 
riotism for the Fatherland. 

It is the most arrant nonsense to assume that these 
people could be led to even think a thought of disloy- 



HYPHENATIONS 183 

alty to Germany, much less to send word to the Father- 
land that it should lay down its arms before it has won 
a decisive victory. Any German newspaper which 
preaches such a doctrine might as well close up its 
doors at once. No man or group of men shall ever 
dictate to me personally or to you or to any of us or 
to us altogether what message we shall send to Ger- 
many. There have been no traitors to the German 
cause either among the 66,000,000 Germans in Ger- 
many or the many millions of Germans and their de- 
scendants in the United States. I have received many 
threats during the past months. I have received many 
solicitations from well-meaning but deluded people ask- 
ing me to urge German-Americans to be unfaithful to 
the German cause; I suppose all of you have had the 
same experience. An answer is unnecessary. 

We must not overlook, however, the immense wealth 
and power at the disposal of the Allies. Should it so 
happen, and God forbid that it may come to pass, that 
Benedict Arnolds should be found amongst us and that 
smooth-tongued hypocrites should greet us with the 
kiss of Judas and the dissimulation of Caiphas, or as- 
suming even that the entire German press should fall 
into hostile hands, even then we could rally in our Ger- 
man societies and we would build anew, beginning the 
fight from the beginning. Just as Germany could lose 
all else — but no nation be able ever to crush the spirit 
that has produced the forty richest years of creative ef- 
fort in the fields of science, art and commerce — so al- 
so the entire weight of England's influence in the Unit- 
ed States will fail to move us one hair's breadth from 
our loyalty to the German cause. 



184 HYPHENATIONS 

The last five months have proven a revelation of 
joy to me. They have shown that the German- Ameri- 
cans stand as one man in the fight. It is true that 
nothing else was to be expected. Our differences seem 
to have been composed with the same ease and felicity 
with which party lines in Germany were merged in the 
interest of the whole. The battle, however, is not yet 
won. This nation is being assailed by the adroit and 
unscrupulous methods which precipitated Europe into 
the present cataclysm. The German has been con- 
demned because he has spoken his mind, openly and 
without fear. He has been accused of "conducting a 
campaign." The time is approaching, however, when 
he can no longer refrain from doing so. This country 
has never had and will never have cause to fear the 
German element in it. The traditions of honor and 
frankness which characterize the German in Ger- 
many characterize him no less in the Unied States. 
These are qualities which no man or no nation 
need fear. It is the snake in the grass which gives just 
cause for alarm. There are many such about us to-day. 
And it is against their desire and their essay to coil 
their loathsome thought about the mind of the Ameri- 
can people that the German-American must be on his 
guard. 

I am not preaching sedition. I am preaching the 
highest form of loyalty that I know. We are a mixed 
people in the United States. We have come from the 
ends of the earth. We have all given our mite to the 
building up of this great country. We all deserve 
equally of it and it of us. There is no reason, there- 



HYPHENATIONS 185 

fore, why its destinies should be swayed more by the 
people who think as England thinks than by those 
who think as Germany does. I have always thought 
that there was an American system — that we broke 
with Great Britain because we could not live un- 
der the British system. It would seem, however, that 
I have been wrong, and that we are still at the beck 
and call of the British Government. The call grows 
louder as the war wears on and England wears out. 
Against the efforts being made to embroil us in this 
conflict on the side of the Allies, it is the duty of every 
German-American not alone to Germany but to the 
United States to fight as strenuously as it is in him 
to fight. Only in this way can the flood of British in- 
fluence in this country be stemmed. 

I cannot subscribe to the doctrine that "born in Ger- 
many" carries with it in this country any disqualifica- 
tions. It has been said that if the German in the 
United States does not like what the United States 
think, he should return to Germany. And those who 
have said this forget that the German, just as well as 
the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Russian, the Ser- 
vian and the Montenegrin, who has come here, is not 
only in but of the United States; and his opinion is 
as much a part of the opinion of the United States as 
is theirs. There is no question of "liking what the 
United States think." The Germans here are as loyal 
to American thought as they are to the American flag. 
And what America thinks will in a very large measure 
depend upon what the Germans in America think and 
make others think. The greatest duty of the German- 



186 HYPHENATIONS 

American to-day is to stand solidly and strongly for 
the creation of a public opinion which will not only 
keep the United States out of the war but will remedy 
the injury done to Germany by the British campaign. 
The German societies have it in their power to lead in 
this movement. 

GERMANS MILITANT. 

"And those who spent in Germany, as I did, the 
month of August 19 14, mingling freely in the crowds 
on the streets during the two weeks of the mobilization, 
when the public excitement was greatest, can only 
wonder that a people so peacab'le and self-restrained 
should be capable of the daring courage which has 
since stormed fortresses and has gathered laurels on 
land and sea in a way which compels the admiration 
of all who have not been kept in ignorance of the 
facts." 

Thus wrote Professor George Stuart Fullerton, who 
has known Germany and the German people for thirty 
years, at the beginning of last month. 

Since the inception of the present war we have been 
asked, by parties not disinterested in the trend of 
American opinion, to alter in two very different con- 
nections the historical opinion of the German nation. 
We have been asked, firstly, to regard a people which 
through all the centuries has stood for peace and the 
arts of peace as blood-lusting barbarians, exponents 
of "instructed savagery" ; and, secondly, as cowards be- 
fore "the British bayonet" and the Cossack's sabre. 



HYPHENATIONS 187 

The allegations by which the first charge is support- 
ed may be overlooked. They have been disproved and 
condemned by every responsible and dispassionate 
writer who has written from the front. They are the 
"war measures" of an intensely angered and scared 
England. 

The stories of German troops running from British 
bayonets — that wonderfully illiterative and useful 
phrase — may with similar ease be disposed of. The 
same organs of publicity which revel in these tales 
present us occasionally with reports that such and 
such a town or village or farm-house in Belgium has 
been captured and recaptured at the point of the 
bayonet five or six times in a day. I may be wrong, 
but such reports do not impress me convincingly with 
the fact that the German is very much alarmed by the 
British or by the bayonet. The story of Poland is 
sufficient to dispel any apprehension as to his fear of 
the Cossack's sabre. 

The part which modern artillery of tremendous 
range and immense destructive power has been called 
upon to play in this war, and which has been advertised 
as a new feature of warfare, has given a widely ac- 
cepted impression that battles are won or lost by 
artillery alone — that they have lost that manly feature 
which they contained in the days when men fought 
with axe and mace and the best man, physically, won — 
that hand-to-hand fighting is no longer possible or 
permissible. This impression is wrong. A new 
element has been introduced by modern artillery — and 
introduced largely by German science, but it has not 



188 HYPHENATIONS 

robbed even the war of to-day of the old man-to-man 
struggle. We hear of "fist- fights" between the con- 
tending troops in the west and of a fifteen-mile "butts- 
front" engagement between the Germans and the Rus- 
sians about Lodz — in which the Germans won. The 
trenches in the West have drawn so close to each other 
that artillery fire is no longer possible. Only hand 
grenades and the bayonet can be used. And yet, some- 
how, the Germans "stick." There is hand-to-hand fight- 
ing going on along the whole line, and wherever it is 
going on the Germans are there "with the goods". The 
story of Teutoburger Forest is being written again 
today — despite the efforts of Germany's enemies to 
write something very different. The German is no 
coward, and all efforts to prove him such fall as easily 
to the ground as any effort would to prove his enemies 
such. The effort should not in the first instance have 
been made. The German soldier wants only to get at 
the enemy and it doesn't matter whether with butts 
or bayonets. 

An attempt has been made to characterize as 
"theatrical" the action of the crews which stood on 
their decks off the Falklands, hopelessly beaten in a 
battle in which they had no chance of victory, and went 
to their watery graves with the songs of the Father- 
land upon their lips. Could they have done better : 
Caught, as they would have caught, in the service of 
their country, and doomed by a stronger enemy, what 
more appropriate thought for their minds or words for 
their lips than those of praise for a country which they 
served and all that it held dear for them ? The battle in 



HYPHENATIONS 189 

which Admiral Count von Spee's squadron was largely 
destroyed will remain in the annals of the present 
war a tribute to German heroism — and patriotism. It 
is a poor-minded enemy that challenges the manner in 
which the foe goes to his grave. 

The German troops which are opposing six nations 
on the fields of Europe are animated by the same spirit. 
There is but one thought in their minds : the Father- 
land and its safety. And they go to their graves with 
the same willingness and the same dignity. A corre- 
spondent, writing to a London paper, relates this in- 
cident in connection with the Austrian sorties from 
Cracow : "A lieutenant told me that the force which 
took part in the sortie was 15,000 strong, and though 
they inflicted a heavy loss upon the enemy, not 2,000 
of them got back. They marched out of Cracow one 
evening at seven o'clock, encountered the Russians at 
two o'clock in the morning, and charged them three 
times on a front of three kilometers around the outer 
fortifications." This is the temper of the Austrian 
allies of Germany. Another correspondent, writing 
from the front in Russian Poland, has this to say of 
the German's fear of the "sabre of the Cossacks"; 
"In one of the operations around Lodz occurred the 
celebrated 'cutting off of two German army corps, 
which, after being entirely surrounded by the rapid 
advance of the Warsaw reserves, turned and cut their 
way out, and brought with them 12,000 of their would- 
be captors. The scene of this exploit, which a member 
of the General Staff characterized as one of the most 
brilliant of the war, was Strykow, ten miles to the 



190 HYPHENATIONS 

north-east of Lodz." This is the temper of Germany 
itself. I might go on and repeat the stories of German 
and Austrian heroism and sacrifice which have come 
from the battlefields of the east and west ad in- 
finitum. We who have known the Germans so long do 
not require them. 

And it is not the German soldier alone that is giv- 
ing his life and his all to the Fatherland. The German 
officer is built of the same stuff. The fashion of cari- 
caturing the "Iron Cross" in this country is new. There 
have been many given in this war — and as many de- 
served. That some of them have fallen to high officers 
and even to members of the Emperor's family does not 
need to qualify this statement. This is a war in which 
"Prince and Peasant" are equally joined and equally 
willing to do the best that is in them for the cause in 
which the heart of both is wrapped up. When Prince 
Eitel Fritz grabbed a drum from the hand of a fallen 
soldier and rolled out the command to charge, there 
was nothing but the German left in him. The Prince 
was gone. When Prince Joachim, wounded in action 
against the Russians and succored by a corporal, wrote 
to the man who had given him first aid and ended with 
these words : "Did private Ewe get a new package of 
bandages? I have reproached myself for having taken 
his. And now farewell and remember me to all the 
boys of the 83rd, my Cassel friends, and tell them, 
that I shall be back as soon as I am able to get on 
my feet again. Your thankful comrade Joachim, Prince 
of Prussia" — when Prince Joachim wrote these words, 
he wrote the first and the last commentary on German 



HYPHENATIONS 191 

unity, German heroism and German self-sacrifice in 
the cause of the Fatherland which Germans love and 
wherever they are never forget. A nation built of 
men like these is not afraid of "British bayonets" or 
"Russian sabres". A nation built like this can never be 
conquered. 

Three months fighting on German soil, says Hilaire 
Belloc, and the war will be over — and Germany beaten. 
The war is five months old and the Allies have yet a 
long way to go to this goal, and when they reach Ger- 
man soil they will find that the German is just be- 
ginning to get his temper up. I do not think the Allies 
will ever reach any advanced position on German soil — 
but if they should the war will not be ended in Kitch- 
ener's three years nor in three hundred years, if it 
is fought to the end which England promises — the 
crushing of Germany. 

The German soldier has been tested in the trenches — 
the German commander in the tent and council-cham- 
ber, and neither has been found wanting in strategy or 
courage, in the manipulation of the scientific instru- 
ments of warfare or in hand-to-hand conflict. "With 
such soldiers," said von Hindenburg of the Poland 
campaign, "I cannot but win". With such soldiers, he 
might have said, Germany can never lose. 

BRITAIN AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. 

The instruction sent to the American Ambassador 
at the Court of St. James to lay before the British 
Government the protest of this country against the 



192 HYPHENATIONS 

treatment which its commerce has been accorded by 
Great Britain during the last five months, marks a 
decided and welcome step forward in the assertion of 
our rights. And of the rights, too, of all neutral coun- 
tries. I do not suppose that there has been, since the 
days when England and France played battledore and 
shuttle-cock with neutral trade during the Napoleonic 
wars, a time when a well-minded and peaceful people 
have been called upon to tolerate from a belligerent 
the insults and injuries to which we have been sub- 
jected by Great Britain in these months. Coming to 
us for what she needed to prosecute her war on Ger- 
many, she denied us the right to trade even in commo- 
dities held to be "conditional contraband" with coun- 
tries as neutral as ourselves. Ruling the waves, 
Britannia would also rule the world. Since the in- 
ception of the war no statement of policy has come out 
of Washington so valuable to ourselves or to the rights 
of neutrals in general as this. 

It is said that the protest will be taken by Great 
Britain "in good part". We all hope it will be. We 
don't want war. Great Britain has attempted to apply 
to the United States her historical policy of bulldozing 
and intimidation, and she will probably make her 
historical apologies and retraction, and that is all we 
want — except damages for what she has already ac- 
complished in the way of injury to our trade. That 
is all we want for the present, at least; but in this 
protest lies a potential beginning for the assertion of 
the principle that neutrals as well as belligerents have 
rights in times of war and that if we wish to relegate 



HYPHENATIONS 193 

war to a shelf in the museum of discarded historical 
fallacies, the rights of neutrals should be given pre- 
ference. 

The attitude of Great Britain has been as absurd as 
it has been untenable. One has only to go to British 
authorities on the rights of nations to confound her. 
The surprising thing is not that the English are shocked 
at the protest, but that it was not lodged sooner. The 
denial of our right to trade freely with Holland, Italy 
and Scandinavia is perhaps the most flagrant exhibition 
of international impudence to which the world has been 
treated in modern times. We are not at all interested 
in assisting England to starve out Germany. We are 
interested, however, in not being starved ourselves, 
and it is apparent that at last even Washington has 
become alive to the dangers in the policies enunciated 
and put into practice by our cousins across the water. 
We are a tolerant people, but there is an end to tolera- 
tion in all things. 

The "polite language" in which the protest is said 
to have been couched is meet and fitting. It should 
not be misunderstood, however. It will probably ac- 
complish its purpose, and if it does there will remain no 
cause for unpleasantness. A sugar-coated pill may be 
as hard to swallow as any other, but it tastes better. 
There should be no attempt made, however, to 
minimize the meaning of what we have to say to Eng- 
land or of the seriousness with which it is said. A 
protest is a protest, and if found to be just must be 
met by remedy. We do not want to fight England, but 
we fought her just one hundred years ago and for just 



194 HYPHENATIONS 

the injuries against which we are protesting to her to- 
day. We can do it again. 

The recognition contained in the action of the State 
Department of England's "friendly attitude" toward 
this country should be valuable to those who wish to 
erect on Boston Common a statue of British valour. 
It should be valuable, as well, to those who have harped 
upon militarism so long that they have forgotten the 
dangers of navalism. A large standing army in Europe 
may be a menace to the immediate neighbors of the 
nation which maintains it, but the octopus of navalism 
stretches its countless arms into every corner of the 
world and throttles every trade but that which serves 
it. We have had lessons before, but they have been 
forgotten. The lesson of the present, however, is 
sufficient to teach us that this country is not menaced 
by European militarism but by British navalism. A 
navy which roams and rules the seas and stands for- 
ever between us and our markets, breaking up or 
seriously delaying our trade, is more to be feared than 
a hundred standing armies anchored to their respective 
soils. 

We shall await Great Britain's reply to the protest 
with interest. It has been intimated from London that 
the British Government will defend its actions. What 
defence it proposes to oppose to the claim of a neutral 
nation to trade with other neutral nations free from the 
interference of belligerent Powers we have no manner 
of foreseeing. That it will be conclusively effective — 
from the British point of view — is a foregone conclu- 
sion. Will it be from ours ? We ask only what is given 



HYPHENATIONS 195 

us by international law and the comity of nations. We 
can be denied this only by violating the law of nations. 
Will England admit that she has wronged us and pay 
the bill, or will she throw overboard that public law 
for which she has posed as being so solicitous? The 
British Government would be very foolish indeed to 
attempt to argue a point of this sort against the inter- 
ests of the neutral world. 

The British press has sought to conceal its chagrin 
over this obvious exhibition of independence on the 
part of the United States, and we wish them well in 
the endeavor. The great danger, as London sees it, 
is "not from the British Government, which recognizes 
the legitimacy of America's agitation, but in raising 
an unfavorable opinion here, which is likely to turn in 
the direction of considering America's action unfriend- 
ly and to lead to accusations that American sympathy 
is governed by commercial profits." I do not think 
the American people need worry very much about pub- 
lic opinion in England. It has always been hostile. A 
little more hostility will not do us half so much harm 
as the interference with our trade has already accom- 
plished. We are dealing with the British Government — 
not with British public opinion — and it is a cause for 
satisfaction that the British Government "recognizes 
the legitimacy of America's agitation." It is a pity 
that recognizing the legitimacy of the "agitation" steps 
were not taken earlier by the British authorities to 
render any occasion for it unnecessary. It would seem 
as if England had been caught again in the attempt to 
''put one over on us." We can only hope that in se- 



/ 



196 HYPHENATIONS 

curing amends it will not be necessary to drag her again 
to Geneva — or to Ghent. 

NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS TO GREAT 
BRITAIN. 

Whatever New Year's greetings we have had to of- 
fer Great Britain during the past few years, our mes- 
sage to-day can be capsuled into three words — "Re- 
pression or reprisal." 

The Times of London, seeking for a ray of sunshine 
in the clouded skies of our relations with Great Brit- 
ain as developed in the protest recently lodged against 
interference with American trade, has this to say : "The 
note is dated December 24th, and, although the idea 
may seem fanciful, we cannot help imagining that it 
was by no accident that the eve of the great festival 
of peace and goodwill was chosen for the dispatch of 
this friendly communication from one of the great 
branches of the English-speaking communities to the 
other." The Times should not delude itself, or attempt 
to delude England, with an idea so fanciful. If there 
was any significance in the date on which the note was 
dispatched, it is this: it was so timed that the British 
Foreign Office might have time in which to consider 
it, and make its New Year's resolutions to treat us 
more fairly. We can only hope that it was well timed. 

The cabled reports of the British attitude toward the 
protest are not what we had good reason to expect 
them to be. There is apparently a desire on the part 
of the British people to evade the responsibility which 



HYPHENATIONS 19? 

attaches to them. The British, in other words, seem 
to have gotten their backs up and wish to discuss the 
matter We do not wish to discuss it. We are wrong 
-and the answer is to retract our protest; or we are 
right, and the answer is for Great Britain to call oft 
her sea-hounds. It has been admitted that the British 
Government recognizes the legitimacy of our agita- 
tion "_ mar k the word "agitation"-and admitting the 
legitimacy can Great Britain ask for time in which to 
discuss points on which discussion has been rendered 
useless by her admission of our rights in the pr«mses? 
The suggestion that Great Britain will fall back up- 
on the "breathing spell" of twelve months allowed un- 
der Mr. Bryan's recent treaty of arbitration with Great 
Britain is not at all reassuring. We have stood for 
England's violation of our rights for five months- 
and that is long enough. What we have endured dur- 
ing these months is the basis of our complain t. We 
are certainly not going to wait another year for the 
remedy of these conditions. We want it now. We 
want our rights and we don't want to have to wait for 
them until it suits Great Britain to give them to us. 
An uninsurable amount of harm has been done to 
our trade by the irresponsible conduct of the British 
navy, and we want this stopped, and stopped now 

Another suggestion, emanating from the British 
press, that we must await relief from the things of 
which we complain until Great Britain has secured 
"watertight" agreements from Holland, Italy Scandi- 
navia and Switzerland that no contraband articles wi 
be dispatched from their territories to Germany is 
equally unsatisfactory. 



198 HYPHENATIONS 

We have a perfect right to trade with whomsoever 
we please. Only Great Britain challenges this right. 
Are we to accept it? 

The protest sent from Washington to London was 
the work of the best diplomatic minds in the service 
of the American people for the time being. It will have 
the support of the American people. There should be 
no misunderstanding on this point. We were ready to 
fight for Olney's Venezuela Declaration and we are 
just as ready to fight for our rights in the present in- 
stance. 

As I said yesterday, it was to be hoped that England 
would see right and meet our friendly request for 
friendly treatment on the seas in a friendly manner. 
If she will not do so, the responsibility is upon her own 
shoulders. This country is not going to lend itself to 
a policy of "starving out" Germany or any other na- 
tion. We could just as easily starve out Great Britain, 
if we wish. Our interest is with ourselves. We have 
been accused of sympathies dictated by "commercial 
profits" and that by a people who prided themselves 
upon being "a nation of shopkeepers." We are at 
last coming to a point where we can truly appreciate 
British friendliness for the United States. Swamped 
as we have been during the past few months with Brit- 
ish pro-American literature, so different from what we 
have heretofore read from the same British sources for 
years — there was a danger that the American people 
might be misled. The danger is over now. We know 
on what side of the North Sea our true enemies lie. 

I am frank to say that I do not like the tenor of the 



HYPHENATIONS 199 

British press. Some of it is conservative and some of 
it is hostile. There runs through it, however, a strain 
of that "impeccable British self-righteousness" which 
ill comports with our ideals. We can stand for much 
but we cannot stand for all things. The British Gov- 
ernment should understand this. We do not want de- 
lay or discussion — but remedy. 

I wish we might send another New Year's wish to 
England, but under the circumstances I can see only 
this: "Repression or reprisal." 

THE SOLITARY SWORD-WALKER. 

Spectacle counts, attracts, commands. A four-ring 
circus is bound in the nature of human things to com- 
pel a larger measure of attention than the solitary per- 
former who plies his profession on the street corner. 
And when the circus is brought to our very door and 
the lone performer is far away, the relative dispropor- 
tion of their attracting power is increased in direct ra- 
tio to the distance which separates them from us. 

We are having staged for us to-day in Europe, at 
our very door as it were, a four-ring circus — though 
only in the sense in which the word was applied by the 
ancient Romans to their blood-soaked arenas ; and the 
tremendous and terrible spectacle of it all holds and 
has held us wrapt in horror. There is nothing, how- 
ever, save its magnitude, to differentiate the present 
European conflict from anyone of the many other wars 
that have been waged on the Continent since its history 
began to be written. There is nothing involved in it 



200 HYPHENATIONS 

to bring it nearer home to the American people than 
the Napoleonic wars, for instance. Yet our ears and 
our eyes and our voices are hopelessly charmed by it. 
We refuse brusquely and with ill concealed impatience 
to listen to the suggestion that another performance is 
going on in the world which should have a place in our 
thoughts. We close our eyes and shout down any 
voice raised in such a suggestion. And yet, all the while, 
out beyond the crossroads of the Pacific, a single 
sword-walker is performing his trick, unnoticed save 
b'y the East, without the advertisement he merits but 
seeks to avoid. The performance is still on, and the 
best part is yet to come. It holds much more for us 
than the events that are transpiring in Europe. We 
should patronize it with our closest attention, for when 
the curtain rings down it will be too late. 

The sword-walker is Japan. With consummate art 
he has nimbly mounted and descended over the swords 
of Kiaochow and the German possessions in the Pacific 
which lie so close to our own. He runs his finger along 
their edge to show that they are sharp. They are good 
swords and useful in his trade, and he will keep them. 
The promise to present them to the audience is not to 
be respected. We are — or should be — represented in 
that audience and we have a right to demand that the 
promise be made good. Will we? 

When Japan was called into the war by Great Brit- 
ain, or called herself in — there seems to be a wide dif- 
ference between the London and Tokyo versions of 
the story of Japan's entrance into the conflict— the 
British papers did not attempt to conceal their appre- 



HYPHENATIONS 201 

hension that this participation of a yellow race in a 
white man's war would meet with but scant approval 
in the United States. The British press was not blind 
to our interests in the Pacific, and called frankly upon 
the Government for assurance from Japan to allay 
any suspicions which might arise in this country as a 
result of the action of its ally. I have always been 
under the impression that these assurances were given, 
and that they consisted in a promise to return Kiaochow 
to China — "eventually," it is true ; and not to extend 
her operations "to the Pacific Ocean beyond the China 
Seas, except in so far as it may be necessary to pro- 
tect Japanese shipping lines in the Pacific, nor beyond 
Asiatic waters westward of the China Seas, or to any 
foreign territory except to territory in German occu- 
pation on the continent of Eastern Asia." Whether 
or not these assurances were given by Japan, there can 
be no doubt that they were given by Great Britain, in 
its note of August 17th. And Great Britain stands in 
the eyes of the world the sponsor of Japan in this war. 
There was consequently some surprise caused by the 
announcement that Japanese forces had occupied the 
German possessions in the Marshall, Caroline and 
Ladrone Islands, considerably "westward of the China 
Seas." It was explained at the time that this action had 
been taken for military reasons — but no explanation 
was given as to why it was taken by Japan rather than 
by Great Britain. It was further stated that the is- 
lands thus occupied would be held by Japan only until 
the end of the war. At best, there was but little con- 
solation in that. We do not know how long the war 



202 HYPHENATIONS 

in Europe may carry on — and we may be in war with 
Japan before it is terminated. But we swallowed it 
and said nothing. Then came the story of Japanese 
expeditions being fitted out to visit these islands and 
determine upon their fitness for Japanese colonies. 
What little hope we had that our own possessions in 
the Pacific would not remain boxed by our one invet- 
erate enemy vanished with this report. The necessity 
for further explanations and assurances led to the ru- 
mor that Japan had decided to turn over all the islands 
to Australia. This found a prominent place in the 
British press — ever on the look-out for some handle 
to American "moral support" — and ran its little day. 
It now develops that Japan will deliver to Australia — 
or says she will — only those islands which lie belo\ 
the equator, and will retain everything to the north of 
the equator which she has seized or may seize. Thus 
Japan will continue to occupy the Marshall, Ladrone 
and Caroline Islands, precisely those which we do not 
want her to possess. 

So much for "Asiatic waters westward of the China 
Seas." A growing feeling among the Japanese people, 
discernible in the cables from Tokyo since Kiaochow 
was occupied, that this territory should be retained, 
seems to have culminated in the Government's reply 
to an interpellation in the Diet a few days ago to the 
effect that Japan was under no obligations to return 
it to China. The Oriental mind runs in channels "meas- 
ureless to man," and it is possible that the Japanese 
Government will be able to mentally wriggle to its own 
satisfaction out of the obligation undertaken in its ul- 



HYPHENATIONS 203 

timatum to Germany, in which it demanded the sur- 
render of Kiaochow "with a view to the eventual res- 
toration of the same to China." The argument ad- 
vanced for this latest volte face is that the promise of 
eventual restoration to China was contingent upon the 
peaceful delivery of the territory to Japan, that it cost 
Japan much in men and money to secure the delivery, 
and that she is consequently freed from the promise. 
That may be good enough logic for our little brown 
brothers — but it is not good enough for the rest of the 
world. The promise was not made to Germany and 
was not contingent upon anything. It was made to the 
world in general and to China in particular. The seiz- 
ure of Kiaochow was a piece of gratuitous altruism— 
from the Japanese point of view — or it was nothing 
b'ut robbery. China did not call upon Japan to effect 
the restitution to her of a territory which she had in 
due form leased to Germany. I am quite sure, had she 
been asked, she would have preferred that Kiaochow re- 
mained in German hands. There would have then been 
the certainty that at the end of the lease it would return 
to her. She knows very well that it is now lost to 
her forever. The possession of Kiaochow means to the 
Japanese mind compensation for the loss of Wei-hai- 
wei, in the same province, from which Japan was 
forced after the China-Japanese War. The sound of 
guns in the fight for Port Arthur was distinctly heard 
on the Shantung Promontory. The possession of Shan- 
tung is complementary to that of Port Arthur. The 
one will be surrendered as soon as the other — and that 
will be never. 



204 HYPHENATIONS 

We pity China, but the lesson for us in Kiaochow 
is that Japanese promises are written in the ashes of 
the hibachi. We shall see the Pacific possessions which 
were once Germany's regained by Germany or retained 
forever by Japan, unless we take them from her by 
force and at great cost. There are not wanting signs 
that the usefulness of Japan to Great Britain is being 
widely questioned in England and that the end of this 
war will see the end of the Anglo- Japanese alliance, 
and with the dissolution of the alliance England will 
wash her hands clean of responsibility for the conduct 
of her erstwhile ally and hold them up to us in horror 
when we suggest that she has betrayed us. That how- 
ever, is just what she has done. If not at her request, 
certainly with her connivance, Japan entered the war 
and has possessed herself of points of strategic im- 
portance the occupation of which by Japan is a direct 
menace to our legitimate interests in the Pacific. Eng- 
land promised us that Japan would not make these ter- 
ritorial acquisitions. She now countenances them, and 
is apparently preparing to walk from under the re- 
sponsibility which attaches to her double-faced action. 
If she is sincere in her protestations of friendship for 
this country, there is still time for her to influence her 
ally to make amends for their jointly broken promises 
by withdrawing from territory which she guaranteed 
Japan would not molest. Unless England does this 
she will call in vain upon this country for its goodwill. 



HYPHENATIONS 205 

WHY GERMAN-AMERICANS TAKE UP THEIR 
SPEECH. 

I have been asked why it is that the Germans and 
the German-Americans are so solicitous for the good- 
will of the American people that they have been im- 
pelled to a strong protest against the obviously anti- 
German attitude of a considerable element of the 
American press. 

I have long foreseen that this question might be 
raised, but have all along hoped it might not be. The 
answer in a word, or a few words, is this : The Ger- 
man in Germany is as alive as is the Englishman in 
England to the value of the friendship of neutral peo- 
ples, and the German-American, as prominent and as 
essential an element in the American nation as the 
English-American, claims for himself and for his 
parent-country the privilege of not being misunder- 
stood. 

The train which fired this war was laid from Bel- 
grade to Vienna, and yet both Servia and Austria-Hun- 
gary seem to have been forgotten in the British cam- 
paign to induce the American people to believe that it 
is a conflict only between the "democracy" of Great 
Britain and the "autocracy and militarism" of Ger- 
many. The true causes of the war have been merged, 
at the behest of England, in a maze of fictional causes 
written by her own and her allied writers. Germany 
has been made the "goat" for all the horror and misery 
of Europe which has resulted from this world con- 
flagration. I do not think that the veriest German 



206 HYPHENATIONS 

would give the matter a second thought, if these 
traductions had been confined to Great Britain and had 
served her only as a measure for drawing recruits to 
her standards of empire. When, however, they are 
extended throughout a neutral world there is just 
cause for reply. 

They have been used in this country largely as a 
measure to secure not only our "moral support" but 
to create a sympathy that will support the overtime 
running of our arms and ammunition factories that 
we may turn rifle barrels and mold bullets for the de- 
struction of Germans — men as good as the British 
and more friendly to ourselves. Were this element 
of the British campaign of seduction eliminated, much 
would be accomplished; but there would still remain 
the evil which would inevitably result from the sub- 
version of American opinion to the service of one of 
the belligerent nations — and that the one to the service 
of which we can least well afford to be subservient. 

There is apparently an unfortunate impression in the 
mind of certain people that there are in the United 
States at the present time "an American opinion" and 
*'a German-American opinion". There are not. The 
German-American is, and feels himself to be, as much 
a part of the American people, socially and politically, 
as any other racial element in it. I do not think that 
his right to be and to so feel can be questioned. A 
consignment of British protectants inaugurated the 
foundations of the United States, but it was very 
different elements which secured and perpetuated the 
institutions for which we stand at the present time. 



HYPHENATIONS 207 

Among these the German and the Irish have been pre- 
eminent. This nation can no longer call or regard 
itself as English. When we reflect upon the numbers 
of Italians, Scandinavians, Irish, Germans, Austrians 
and peoples from Southeastern Europe which have 
joined our population, merged themselves in it and 
striven and fought and are still striving and fighting 
for our ideals, this truth becomes very apparent. We 
are a very mixed people. And amongst this mixture 
the German is now alone denied the right to voice his 
opinions. 

The formulation of a concrete and consistently 
national opinion in regard to the merits of this war or 
in regard to the justice of the claims of the various 
belligerents seems no longer possible. The best that 
can be accomplished is the evening up of the German- 
American opinion with the opinion of those elements 
in the American populace which have other origins. 
That, as I see the matter, is the aim of the German- 
American. The desire to have his voice heard in the 
councils of a nation of which he is a part, on a subject 
in which he is vitally interested, is all that he asks. I 
would not deny him this. I do not think that any well- 
thinking American will deny it to him. The German- 
American has the same right to claim a portion in the 
expressed opinion of a country which he has worked 
to establish as any other person or persons. It is only 
the attempted denial of this claim that has called forth 
the protest alluded to. The German-American wishes 
to see this country placed upon the sure foundation of 
the ideals which he came here to find. He does not 



208 HYPHENATIONS 

wish to see it subverted to the uses of England or of 
any other nation. When all the signs of the times point 
to such subversion he protests, and strongly, against it. 

I recognize that the Austrians have been com- 
paratively silent upon the subject of American opinion. 
And well they may be. The burden of recrimination 
has had to be borne by Germany — and why ? We have 
had to submit to a flood of British literature on the 
war — and Great Britain sees and can see but one 
enemy — the enemy which Lord Northcliffe has pict- 
ured to the British people for a decade or so. The 
original causes of the war have been forgotten in Great 
Britain's attempt to confuse our minds. The invasion 
of Belgium — an incident subsequent to the essential 
facts of the case — has been made "the all" of the war — 
and Germany has been made to bear the total respon- 
sibility therefor. To allow this to pass unchallenged 
would b'e to admit Germany to be in the wrong — which 
no right-thinking neutral will admit. We, German- 
Americans, can see beyond the thin veil of England's 
duplicity, and we wish of our fellow Americans only 
that they, too, should see the light. We do not ask all 
to agree with us, but what we do ask is that we should 
be allowed a chance to present the facts cogently to 
them and that they should judge by the facts. 

We have the same right to formulate or to attempt 
to formulate or to have a part in the formulation of 
"American opinion" as others, and we do not intend 
to surrender this right to Americans of any other 
origin or ancestry. We are firmly convinced that no 
good can come to this country, which we all love and 



HYPHENATIONS 209 

respect and wish to maintain unimpaired, from the 
domination of its "public opinion" by any one European 
people. We are willing to admit the right of those who 
think as England thinks to express their views — we 
ask only that we who think as Germany thinks be 
allowed the same right. There is a large body of 
"un-hyphenated Americans" who think with us, not 
only on the subject of this right, but as well upon the 
merits of the war in general. I do not feel that we 
need worry essentially as to the ultimate opinion of 
the American people either as regards the outcome of 
the war or as regards the attitude of the German or 
the German-American in the matter of the discussion 
of it in this country. 

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE VS. PARTISAN 
SENTIMENT. 

There is one angle of the American protest to Great 
Britain which has not been overlooked in England but 
which has been given very little publicity on this side 
of the water. I refer to the fact that it has become 
plain to Great Britain, as it has to Washington, that, 
even if our press overlooks the matter, the interests 
of the United States clash directly with those of Great 
Britain. The situation which now confronts us, judged 
by large aspects, is one wherein the interests of the 
United States for the present are identical with those 
of Germany and are opposed to those of Great Britain. 

The feeling against Germany in this war in the 
United States is largely sentimental. It had its be- 



210 HYPHENATIONS 

ginning in the violent utterances of British writers 
against the personality of the Emperor and in the 
greater feeling of pity for Belgium — harped so largely 
upon by England. But whenever the interests of a 
nation are at stake, sentiment and sympathy begin to 
lose their force. 

The American trade centers affected by the attitude 
of Great Britain are beginning to look at the matter 
from a personal viewpoint. Thousands of American 
workmen engaged in our trades suffer directly from 
the repression of Great Britain, and they begin to see 
through the thin fabric of misrepresentation with 
which Great Britain has attempted to blind us. It 
may take months, it may take years, but if this war 
should last that long, the day will come when public 
opinion in the United States will be directly hostile to 
Great Britain because public opinion in the long run 
follows the channels of national interests and we will 
not permit Great Britain or any other country to 
sacrifice us to achieve their own ends. It is not that 
we love Germany the more, but that we will not allow 
England to fool us the less. 

If there is any single characteristic of the American 
which more than another stands out boldly, it is the 
spirit of independence. It is necessary for Britain in 
her attempt to "starve out Germany" to violate our 
spirit of independence. Great Britain's policy can only 
be successful if we are an active ally of hers. Clear- 
thinking minds, such as Dr. Eliot and others of the 
Boston School, have understood this matter from the 
beginning, and they have urged that we take decisive 



HYPHENATIONS 211 

and vigorous steps in this war. They realized that we 
could not remain neutral and submit with dignity to the 
crushing repression which England was about to lay 
upon our commerce. They saw that to be consistent, 
it would be necessary for us to be belligerent. Each 
day brings us nearer to the point where we will have 
to choose between serving England's cause and having 
her dictate our policies, or standing upon our own feet 
and being our own master. 

I have no hesitation in feeling or saying that the 
spirit of independence in the United States — indepen- 
dence of one and all the countries of Europe — will 
carry us safely through this world war. I wish only 
that we may emerge from it stronger and safer than 
ever. We can do this only, however, by a true ap- 
preciation of the assaults made upon our "public 
opinion" by the various warring powers. The British 
have taken the lead in this — but we should not be 
fooled by England. Our interests lie deeper and are 
more national than those pointed out by London. We 
are threatened by a re-action in the national sentiments 
of the British people toward ourselves. Should we 
worry ? Have we not experienced and survived similar 
"re-actions" in the past? When, for example, has 
British opinion been friendly to Americans? When 
has German opinion been other than friendly? The 
"United States of Central North America" — mark the 
"Central" — is the manner in which a high official of 
His Britannic Majesty's Government alludes to this 
country. We must be blind indeed to overlook these 
evidences of British superiority and impeccability, and 



212 HYPHENATIONS 

to throw the weight of our opinion on the side of Great 
Britain and her allies. 

The question of sentiment is, however, one of 
secondary importance. The question of national in- 
terest is one which must come " front and center" in 
our minds and hearts. It was long ago pointed out 
to us that our one friend in Europe was Germany. 
We scoffed at the suggestion — but day by day and 
month by month, the truth of it has been brought 
more and more to our attention. The enemy of the 
United States is not to-day Germany — but England. 
And the England which not only supports Japan on 
our Western coast but throttles our trade in the 
Atlantic. 

We cannot close our eyes to the results of this war. 
We cannot forget that if England comes out of it 
with her fleet intact our commerce will be as much in- 
debted to it for the privilege of crossing the open 
oceans as it is to-day. A victorious Germany holds no 
such prospects for us. The only reassurance which 
England can give us against this anticipation will be 
contained in the immediate and absolute reversal of her 
policy on the seas. Unless such reversal of policy is 
at once entered upon, we must recognize England as an 
enemy — not alone to ourselves but to all neutrals. 

The attempt of the Times of London to write a 
chapter of discourtesy into the exchange of notes 
between Washington and London has failed. The 
attempt, on the other hand, to stricture Mr. Bryan for 
allowing the sense of his instruction to Mr. Page to 
leak out, has been equally futile. There was neither 



HYPHENATIONS 213 

discourtesy nor oversight in the matter. Diplomatic 
documents are written for record — expressions of 
public opinion are of greater value in interpreting 
them. We told Great Britain all we could, officially, 
in the note under reference. We have told her much 
more in the public discussion of it. What she may 
accept as our feeling is this : that we want redress, and 
that if we have couched the request for redress in 
"polite language" it is for diplomatic reasons only. If 
she wants to know our true intentions, she may read 
them in our newspapers. 

When one scans this mild and diplomatic protest, 
he cannot but come to the conclusion that we have been 
gentle with England, nor can he come to any other 
conclusion than that our interests do not and never can 
lie with Great Britain, Betrayed by her, alike in the 
Pacific and the Atlantic, our interests lie from now on 
with Germany. May the day soon come when the 
American people realize this! 

NEW YEAR THOUGHTS FOR AMERICANS. 

The New Year's season has come, by immemorial 
custom, to be regarded as the psychological moment 
for making good resolutions. The war which began 
last August and the end of which is not more nearly 
in sight than it was five months ago, offered in certain 
ruarters this year a wide scope for such. There was, 
therefore, no surprise at the amount of good intentions 
in regard to the war and the ending of it which were 
given to the world from London all the way to Petro- 



214 HYPHENATIONS 

grad. We have not heard from Tokyo, but when we 
do the stones which she contributes to that proverbial 
pavement of which we have heard so much will un- 
doubtedly be inscribed with the same legend as those 
presented by Japan's occidental allies. The pity is that 
this season of good cheer could not have brought less 
thought of ''crushing the enemy" and more of bringing 
peace again to a torn and lacerated world. 

Whatever Europe may think or resolve, however, is 
no measure or standard by which we may or should 
allow our own resolutions to be gauged or guided. We 
stand apart from the immediate horrors of the war. 
We cannot with any approach to reality visualize them. 
Could we but do this, I am sure that long ago we should 
have begun to avail ourselves of the power which we 
have to bring them to an early termination. The 
British are beginning, when they tardily recognize that 
the war is "some of our business", to tell us that it is 
not. This should be for us the psychological moment 
to tell them that it is. And to tell them why. I say 
tell the British, because it was the British Govern- 
ment which engineered the war, has more than any 
other functioned its continuance this long, and claims 
the sole right to say when and in what terms peace shall 
be written. 

i here are two very strong reasons why the American 
people wish to see the war brought to an early end. 
One of them may be described as commercial and the 
other as humanitarian. A people so unused as we are 
to war — so firmly imbued with the conviction that in 
peace alone can the highest in the arts and sciences be 



HYPHENATIONS 215 

attained to — so sensitive to the human suffering which 
war entails — cannot continue to look on at this whole- 
sale slaughter of the best flesh and bone and intellect 
of a continent with complacency. We cannot, on the 
other hand, countenance the indefinite perpetuation of 
the havoc which the war is working with our domestic 
industries and foreign commerce. The interference 
which the conflict in Europe has created with our 
access to foreign markets which we have long enjoyed 
and to which our merchants have become habituated 
is not to be regarded lightly. The imposition of a war- 
tax, when we are not at war, of $100,000,000 is no 
measure of it. The irresponsible seizure of American 
cargoes and bottoms at sea is no measure of it. The 
damage which we are suffering industrially and com- 
mercially from Europe's "Roman holiday" is immeas-* 
urable. 

Those who make clothing to warm the armies of the 
Allies or arms for their hands or cartridges to fit those 
arms or who sell horses to mount them and saddles to 
fit those horses, point to the immense increase in our 
export figures for these particular items and cry : "On 
with the war, let slaughter be unconfined." There is, 
however, only avarice, illogic and inhumanity in the 
cry. So violent an opponent of peace in this war "un- 
til Germany is crushed" as Dr. Eliot even admits that 
he hopes that this war will be the last great war with 
which the world is to be inflicted. I join in the hope — 
though not with Dr. Eliot's apparent sanguineness — 
and if we are true to our professed ideals we are com- 
mitted to work to the end that it may be realized. We 



216 HYPHENATIONS 

are in the meantime, however, staying the hand which 
might stop the war, that a few industries, among which 
are not those in which in the normal times we place 
the greatest stock, may b'e unhealthily fattened, only to 
collapse when normal times return again. The advent 
of peace will bring with it a return to normal figures 
of our present inflated exportation of war materials. 
But what of those industries which have nothing to do 
with the arming or feeding or clothing of soldiers in 
the field which are being sent to the wall because the 
war has and is continuing seriously to interfere with 
our markets abroad? Will they return to the normal 
when the war is over? "What goes up must come 
down", but the reverse is not true. The industries in 
this country which have grown up on the war, and they 
may be counted on the fingers of a man's hand, will 
not be better off than they were before it began, while 
those which have been and are being ruined by it will 
not for a long time rise again. What then is our duty, 
to our own, under the circumstances? The answer is 
plain : to do the utmost that within us lies to bring the 
war, with all its concomitant injuries, to the earliest 
possible conclusion. 

This reasoning, I think, is logical. The British do 
not like it, as they have on several occasions already 
told us, and they don't like it because ihaving set out 
to crush one great commercial competitor they wish to 
see the struggle continued until they have ruined two. 
But must we stand idly by and watch our own de- 
struction effected that England, who has not and has 
never had one kind word for the United States or the 



HYPHENATIONS 217 

American people save when by flattery she sought to 
use them for her own ends, may wax fat ? 

I think I have shown why we may justly regard this 
war as being "some of our business" and why our in- 
terests lie in the immediate cessation of hostilities. Can 
we effect that desirable end? One way in which we 
certainly cannot effect it is by politely protesting 
occasionally against individual infringements on our 
rights — and between times sucking our thumbs and 
talking peace. Things have gone too far in Europe 
for talk on this side of the water to effect them. We 
have had sufficient evidence of this to convince us that 
the time has come for words to be replaced by action. 
Writing in the Sun of the day before yesterday, Prof. 
William Milligan Sloane ventured the statement that 
in three months peace would return to Europe if the 
United States went properly about the legitimate seiz- 
ure of the foreign markets which the warring nations 
have been temporarily compelled to abandon. I have 
seen no saner words since the war began. They contain 
not only the way to bring peace again to Europe but 
as well the way to recoup our own losses resulting 
from the war. The conflict which is going on in 
Europe is nothing more nor less than a naked and un- 
adorned exhibition of England's greed — a greed for 
shillings and pence which has so long ruled the world 
that it cannot brook a rival commerce. I do not think 
that we need allow England to sneer any compunctions 
into us on the score of "sympathies dictated by com- 
mercial profits". We have a right to take in the way 
of trade what we can. Were we seriously to set about 



218 HYPHENATIONS 

doing so, and at the same time to place an embargo 
upon the exportation to all the warring nations alike 
of war material, I believe that Professor Sloane's 
three months would be reduced considerably. 

The good which would come of the carrying out of 
such a policy would not be confined to this country or 
this war. It would benefit all the neutral peoples of 
the world, and would, more than anything else, tend 
to discount war in the future. The appreciation with 
which President Wilson's recent communication has 
been received in Italy and the other neutral states of 
Europe points clearly to the fact that the neutral world 
is beginning to weary of the presumption of belligerent 
claims. The surest way in which to bring the war to 
a close is for the powers who are not involved in it to 
demand that the rights of neutrals be given preference 
over those of belligerents, to deny to belligerents the 
sinews of war and to set about gathering up for them- 
selves the bones of commerce which the war-dogs have 
dropped in their endeavor to get at each other's throats. 
Only by the establishment of these principles can I see 
any hope of making war unpleasant for those who 
make it. Only in this way can I see any remedy for 
the injuries which the present war is entailing upon 
ourselves and other non-warring states. With the sup- 
port of the still neutral powers on the Continent and of 
South America, upon the support of both of which we 
can depend, the end suggested could be obtained. 



HYPHENATIONS 219 

STAYING GLORIFIED MURDER. 

The hearing given to the German-American and 
Irish-American delegations from New York, Philadel- 
phia, Chicago and Baltimore by the House Committee 
on Foreign Affairs on Monday, on the subject of the 
pending House and Senate bills providing for an 
embargo on the exportation of war material, marked 
the awakening by a large element of the American 
people to the duty which we owe to ourselves and to 
humanity to end this nefarious traffic which is doing 
so much to continue the war in Europe. 

The delegations included many of our prominent 
citizens, whose motives are above suspicion. What 
effect upon the hastening of the bills from committee 
to floor the hearing will have cannot be foretold, but 
it may be hoped that it will not be inconsiderable. The 
gentlemen who went to Washington on Monday to 
express to the Committee this new spirit of neutrality 
and sane peace propaganda should not be allowed to 
carry on the fight alone. The matter demands the 
widest attention and most cordial support of the whole 
nation — for it is a matter which affects this country as 
a whole and all other neutral countries. Our troubles 
with England on the sea are directly traceable to it; 
for were no contraband exported there would arise no 
occasion for the searching of American cargoes. Our 
industrial troubles are and will continue to be traceable 
to it; for we are materially assisting to prolong the 
conditions which threaten our industries. Our con- 
sciences should be troubled by it ; for by it we are made 



220 HYPHENATIONS 

an accomplice before the fact in the wholesale murder 
in which Europe is revelling. 

Dr. Eliot wants the war carried on until "the Allies 
arrive at fighting Germany on her own soil". Hilaire 
Belloc says that three months of such fighting will see 
the end of the war. I doubt it. The point to be noticed, 
however, is that neither Dr. Eliot, American, nor Mr. 
Belloc, British, wishes to see it brought to an earlier 
conclusion. In the meantime this country must suffer. 
The way to German soil is a long one. 

I can appreciate Mr. Belloc's point of view. When 
Professor George Stuart Fullerton asked the American 
to think himself into the place of the German when 
he assumes to judge Germany in connection with the 
war our anglophile press jeered at the suggestion. 
I like to think, for the moment, when I have occasion to 
criticise the Englishman in this mad conflict, as the 
Englishman thinks himself. It is not so very difficult 
for an American to do so. Our school histories have 
laid an excellent foundation. I can, therefore, think- 
ing as Mr. Belloc and other Britishers think, see 
why England should want the war continued, with 
its inseparable and concomitant injury to this 
country. I have been trying for sixty odd years, how- 
ever, to think as an American, and yet I cannot bring 
myself to see the thing as Mr. Eliot professes to see it. 

I should suggest as a pertinent subject for a noon- 
hour cogitation by Harvard's doyen the following 
question : "Is this propaganda for the indefinite con- 
tinuance of the war, with all the horror and misery it 
entails upon the combatants and all the injury to our- 



HYPHENATIONS 221 

selves, dictated by a regard for the recognizedly 
vacuous protestations of England or for the good of 
our own country?" 

We have it in our power — and when I say "we" I 
mean the United States and the rest of the neutral 
world, whioh will follow our lead — to stay the hand 
of the glorified murderers of Europe. We are admitted 
by Italy — and Italy is the next most powerful — to be 
the greatest nation not now at war. Our right and 
our duty to point the way to the other neutral nations 
is accepted and the exercise of the right and the per- 
formance of the duty is urged upon us. Shall we over- 
look the opportunity? Without our aid England 
could not mount another army nor clothe nor feed nor 
arm it. We have but to withdraw this aid and it will 
not be long before the "dictator of peace" will dictate 
it — or be dictated to. The British Empire can live and 
carry on this war only so long as we allow ourselves 
to be counted a part of it. I have not much against 
England — except my dislike for her quibbling and 
hypocrisy — but I have a very strong feeling for this, 
my native, country. I do not like to see it drawn into 
the maelstrom by the flattery and adulation of British 
temporists. And that is the danger it faces today. 

There are only two paths legitimately open to us: 
one leading to participation in the war and one leading 
to the reattainment and perpetuation of peace. Thus 
far we have walked only in the former. We have for 
some time scarcely even talked of the latter — though 
for years past world peace has been on every American 
lip and the hope of it in every American heart. Why 



222 HYPHENATIONS 

have we thrown over all these words of peace and all 
these hopes of years to serve the moment? Shall we 
return to them and attempt to be consistent, or shall 
we admit that they were no more than the expressions 
of a nervous and restless national larynx? If we wish 
to write peace treaties and proclaim a desire for peace 
on earth, let us work for peace. If we cannot work 
for peace, let us cease the idle babble. We cant of and 
cartoon "Kruppism", and would call down upon the 
city of Essen the fate of Sodom and Gomorrha. Yet 
we sanction our own Essens and our own "Kruppism" 
and build them up to hide the ravages made in other 
industries by England's command of the seas and the 
manner in which she exerts it. We gloat over the 
increase in our foreign trade — in war materials. When 
anyone points out the inconsistency of it he is shouted 
down as a pro-German. The evil which we are doing 
is not so great to Germany, however, as it is to our- 
selves. This spirit must be exorcised or we must give 
up the championship of the ideal of peace. Which shall 
it be? I think it will not be the latter. We want peace 
in Europe, on this hemisphere, throughout the world, 
and we want it as soon and for as long as we can 
secure and preserve it. We can have it by simply 
stretching out our hand for it. We can never have it, 
however, if we continue to feed its enemy. 

We have seen enough of the horrors of war — have 
we not? — enough of harm done to neutral trade — to 
call a halt? The prohibition of the exportation of war 
materials would more certainly and more effectively 
produce that end than any other step which we could 



HYPHENATIONS 223 

take. We do not need to consider what has been the 
policy or the practice of the past: nor whether inter- 
national law permits of the exportation to belligerents 
by neutrals of the means of carrying on their conflicts. 
The continuation of an evil does not justify it, any 
more than two wrongs make a right. The time has 
come to write several new chapters into "international 
law" — that ancient misnomer codified by Grotius in 
1625, which has given the world a year of war for 
every month of peace and which is so lacking in con- 
sistency and logic that it is invoked by Great Britain to 
condemn the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 and 
to justify her own assault upon the neutrality of Den- 
mark in 1807. Unless the relations of states and their 
rights and duties in peace and war are put upon a more 
rational and modern basis at the end of this war it 
will spell stagnation or retrogression. At the present 
outlook 5,000,000 lives will be given in this war — unless 
it is stopped at an early date. Will they, or those al- 
ready given, be sacrificed for nothing? England says 
that they are an offering on the altar of "the sacredness 
of the public law of Europe". I say that from the sod 
manured by their bones and watered with their blood 
should spring a newer, more sacred and more just law 
not of Europe or for Europe alone but of and for the 
world — a law which will make war no longer a pas- 
time for a few puppets whose heads appear on shilling 
pieces "dei gratia". This hemisphere has grown since 
Grotius wrote, and we have a right to a voice in the 
framing of this new international law. And the 
chapter which we should write into it, as the contribu- 



224 HYPHENATIONS 

tion of the Americas, should make it forever im- 
possible for those who would war upon each other to 
fall back upon those who would not for the means of 
carrying out their murder. 

We can stop this war — we can write this chapter into 
the dusty leaves of Grotius — if but we will. Our in- 
terests, domestic and foreign, lie with immediate peace. 
Can there not be created among the American people 
a sentiment of consistency with our proclaimed ideals 
which will outweigh the bribes of birth or blood or 
bourdes and demand that 19 14 be forgotten in the 
endeavor to advance another step or two in the cent- 
uries of human progress? Unless it can be done I shall 
be compelled to confess for the first time in a long life 
that I have seen my fellow countrymen fallen in their 
actions below their words. 

"THE AMERICAN WANTS TO KNOW." 

Barry Pain was not far wrong when he wrote in 
the (London) Chronicle: "The American wants to 
know. If he is told the truth, he will believe it. If he 
is told something not true, he may possibly believe it." 
This purposed compliment might have been made less 
obvious, however, by saying that the American, like 
everyone else, believes generally all that he reads in 
those periodicals of his which pass as reputable and 
authoritative. As a matter of fact, he must do this or 
believe nothing which appears in them — for he has not 
the means of checking up their statements, assertions 
and allegations. 



HYPHENATIONS 225 

This fact, if it has escaped the notice of Mr. Pain, 
has not apparently escaped that of the British press 
agency and has been availed of by this organization 
to its fullest possibilities for the dissemination in this 
country of those tales of "German atrocities" with 
which we have been regaled for the past five months — 
tales which those who know the German people know 
to be the fabrications of an enemy's mind, but which 
carry their shafts of potential hatred and malice into 
the hearts of millions who do not know them. 

Barry Pain was writing to urge upon the British 
Government the necessity of giving the American peo- 
ple the truth about the war ; for, says he, "what we 
need is the goodwill of America." The argument 
which he employs, of more truth and less fiction, con- 
tains an element of reason. The goodwill of the 
American people can never be secured and permanently 
retained by defaming the name of the German Army 
or Germany. 

All lies will out — but when the process is retarded by 
"military requirements" assisted by an ingenious press 
service, a great deal of harm may be done by them be- 
fore they come out. A realization of this latter fact 
seems to have blinded the British Government to the 
inevitableness of the former truth, and to have under- 
laid the policy of passing through its censor the stories 
to which I allude. 

We have had our fill of defamatory stories. They 
have done immeasurable harm in this country already. 
They have, on the other hand, done no one any good. 
When they have been run down they have invariably 



226 HYPHENATIONS 

proved to be false. Some of them have been retracted 
— but retraction never carries with it the weight of 
original assertion. Others have been refused retraction, 
even when proved to be false; and in still other cases 
retraction has been impossible or inconvenient. 

I have before me as I write copies of four letters 
which passed during last November between Mr. M. E. 
Chamberlain of this city and the Frank A. Munsey 
Company. The subject of the correspondence was a 
statement which appeared in an article published in 
Munsey's Magazine to the effect that Prince Albert of 
Schleswig-Holstein had, at the beginning of the war, 
resigned his commission in the German Army and 
offered his sword to England. The obvious purpose 
of the writer was to show that a spirit of disunion 
existed in the German Empire and to build thereon 
a claim for anti-German sympathy. The statement 
was taken up by Mr. Chamberlain, who put himself in 
touch with members of the Prince's family and con- 
vinced himself of its erroneousness. Writing to Messrs. 
Munsey, Mr. Chamberlain pointed out the inaccuracy 
of the statement — for the sword of Prince Albert is 
still being used to good purpose in the German cause; 
and asked that it be corrected in an early edition of 
the magazine. The Munsey Company replied that it 
had questioned the author of the article as to his 
authority for the statement to which exception had 
been taken, and added: "He cannot identify it beyond 
stating that he followed some reputable periodical. He 
is as concerned as we are to learn that he was betrayed 
into inaccuracy." In their second letter to Mr. Cham- 



HYPHENATIONS 227 

berlain, they declined to make the correction suggested, 
on the ground that it could not appear in a number of 
their magazine before February and that "it would then 
be useless to revert to the matter. Things move so fast 
these days that practically everyone who noticed the 
mistake will have forgotten it, and it does not seem 
necessary to dig it up again after such a lapse of time. 

There is much, of course, to be said in defense oi 
the Munsey Company's contention, and not a little to 
be said against it. The most eventual of retractions 
or corrections would have opened the eyes of Amer- 
icans, in a degree, to the fact that in these abnormal 
times they should not believe all they read. In this 
particular case, however, the misstatement was isolated 
and of no great importance. We have all seen the 
attempt to show the fact untrue that from prince to 
peasant they are standing together for the defense of 
the Fatherland "to the last drop of blood and the last 
morsel of bread." 

Within an entirely different category, however, fall 
the repeated repetitions of tales of "German atrocities' 
committed in Belgium. These are spread by the daily 
newspapers, which do not have to wait months before 
the chance presents itself of retracting them, and the 
common sense of the editors of which should make it 
impossible at this late date for them to appear therein. 
Yet the printing of them goes on, despite the denial by 
Americans abroad and by Americans who have return- 
ed home from Europe of their truth. 

The American people pity the Belgians, as a people 
who for years have been induced into a status in- 



228 HYPHENATIONS 

consistent with their professed perpetual neutrality, 
and eventually b'etrayed by England and France. It 
was entirely unnecessary to bolster up this sympathy 
by stories of German inhumanity. We have assumed 
the burden which England and France should have 
borne of supporting the Belgian populace. We have 
done it gladly, but we do not wish to do it under false 
colors and we do not wish to be forced to it by tales of 
''German atrocities" in Belgium — which do not exist. 
Yet England, attempting to walk from under her ob- 
ligations, asks us to pity Belgium because Belgium is 
feeling "the iron heel" of Germany. She does it largely 
by pointing to "German atrocities" perpetrated on the 
Belgian people. One of the most common "leads" is 
that of "mutilation." 

This particular form of "barbarism" stories should 
long ago have been discarded from the columns of the 
American press. We ought to know enough of history 
to know that it rings false. The following questions 
suggest themselves to me, and should suggest them- 
selves to all well thinking Americans : In what previous 
war, of the many in which German States have been 
involved, have the German people, as represented in 
their army, cut off the hands and feet of their foes? 
Why in this war have they done so only in Belgium — 
and not in France and in Poland? Why does this cry 
of mutilation come only from Belgium and Belgium's 
friends ? 

The answer it at hand. The practice of the amputa- 
tion of human extremities as a punishment is one of 
long-standing among the native tribes of the Congo. 



HYPHENATIONS 229 

It was adopted or connived in by their Belgian over- 
lords, as was sufficiently shown by the revelations a few 
years ago of Belgian atrocities in the Congo country, 
as may be read or seen pictured in the British and 
American reports on the subject. It is not and has 
never been a German practice. Wanting for a theme 
on which to write and talk down the Germans, Belgians 
sought only in their own minds for it. We have had it 
presented to us in all possible and revolting forms. 
We have been told that a prominent American lady in 
England had two mutilated children in her charge, and 
her husband has since denied the story absolutely. We 
are now told that the wife of our late Ambassador to 
Paris, who was said to have seen such cases, absolutely 
denies having seen one. We, who know the Germans, 
know that there are no such cases. 

The following letter taken from the New York 
Herald of recent date not only places the seal of false- 
hood upon such tales, but develops as well the source 
from which they spring and the fact that there is at 
least one man in New York who is gentleman enough 
to correct an error of statement into which he had been 
unwittingly led by those in whom he reposed con- 
fidence, rather than allow the German army to continue 
to be misunderstood by the American people. The 
letter speaks for itself — and against the brood of 
mobilized pens which, not content with writing "from 
the front" similar stories of "German brutalities" come 
home to wager that a Scotch Colonel does not know 
what he is writing about the "dum-dums" issued to him 
by the British military authorities. 



230 HYPHENATIONS 

The letter which Mr. Walters wrote to the New York 
Herald on January ist, should be reprinted in every 
paper in this country, and should be used to nail down 
every similar tale of German atrocities in Belgium and 
elsewhere. 

The letter follows: 

To the Editor of the Herald : 

On November 14th you published in your columns 
a letter which I had sent you, headed "German Atroci- 
ties" and reading as follows : 

"I quote from a letter I received from my sister in 
London: — 'We went to a crowded meeting * * * last 
Friday and one of the ministers there said that if we 
could not believe what we heard about the inhuman 
way in which the Germans treat the Belgians, to go to 
the Alexandra Palace * * * where there were ten chil- 
dren with two hands between the lot and men with 
their eyes gouged out'." 

I wrote this letter in good faith, believing the con- 
tents to be true, as the information given emanated 
from a minister, and by signing this communication 
with my full name I have assumed the responsibility 
for its publication. 

A German gentleman of this city has taken up this 
matter and made an investigation of it, which resulted 
in his receiving a statement from the War Refugees 
Committee in London, of which Her Royal Highness 
the Duchess of Verdome is the president and Her 
Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Hol- 
stein the chairman, reading as follows: 



HYPHENATIONS 231 

"Having heard that many stories have been circulat- 
ed with regard to the treatment the Belgians have 
received at the Germans' hands, and that there are 
many cases of mutilation at Alexandra Palace, I write 
to say that I have been working at the palace the whole 
time that refugees have been there and during that 
time there has not been a single case of mutilation, 
either of man, woman of child. 

"If you care to write to Dr. Cuff, head of the work 
at Alexandra Palace, he will confirm what I say. Ella 
M. KastorJ' 

That letter speaks for itself. 

In justice to the German army, I request you to 
please publish the letter in order to right a wrong, 
which it is the duty of every correct thinking man to 
do in a case like this. 

"ARMS, AND THE COUNTRY," I SING. 

The bills which have been introduced in the Senate 
and the House to place an embargo upon the exporta- 
tion from this country to the belligerents of Europe, 
without respect to nationality, of materials of war have 
caused no very great stir in quarters others than those 
recognizedly dominated by British influence. They 
have been accepted as only a legitimate expression of 
our desire for an early termination of this war and a 
step toward making war in the future unpleasant and 
unprofitable to those who would make it. The leader 
in the campaign for the defeat of these measures is 



232 HYPHENATIONS 

unquestionably the New York Times — which has led 
so many of England's forlorn hopes in her present 
struggle for the wiping out of any and all commercial 
competition the world over. 

There must be something more than "illogical neu- 
trality" involved, when the Times calls for assistance 
upon Professor Can field, of the Columbia Law School, 
and Professor de Lapradelle, expounder of inter- 
national law in the University of Paris and at present 
Visiting Professor at Columbia. Their expositions of 
the questions involved appeared in the Times on the 
6th and the 9th instant, respectively. 

There is nothing in M. de Lapradelle's statement to 
be considered. There is no argument — only a Gallic 
appeal for our sympathy and assistance. We knew, 
before Professor de Lapradelle informed us of the 
fact, that we have a right, long established by what is 
known as international law, to export arms and am- 
munition and all the other things which go to make 
war easy for those to whom our assistance is possible. 
There is no answer, therefore, to his appeal- 
There is argument, however, in Professor Canfield's 
brief, but it is the hackneyed and thread-bare argument 
which we have so often seen advanced to defeat these 
measures, and which no longer has the power of con- 
vincing anyone. The fact that we have a right to do 
a thing and have done that thing through the whole 
of our history does not compel or urge us to continue 
the exercise of the right when we have become con- 
vinced that the interests of the country and of 
humanity demand that we desist from exercising it. 



HYPHENATIONS 233 

We are told by Professor Can field that we have 
the right to ship munitions of war to those belligerents 
to whom we can ship anything ; and that to cease to do 
so would be a violation of our neutrality, in that it 
would diminish the advantage which the Allies have 
over Germany by virtue of their command of the seas, 
and would, moreover, involve this country in a breach 
of contract. Both of these arguments are, however, 
illogical and fallacious. 

There can be no exact neutrality in any war: for 
neutrality does not mean "the good old *nle, the simple 
plan, that he should take who has the power and he 
should keep who can". It means rather that the people 
who profess it should give no more advantage to one 
belligerent than to another. The fact that Great 
Britain commands the seas does not compel us and 
should not influence us to further increase her ad- 
vantage over the foe. We have been told that we should 
not even up this advantage : yet we are urged to 
enhance it. Wherein lies the "neutrality" of this? 

I admit readily, quite as readily as those who would 
see this war carried on indefinitely to the greater injury 
of Europe and America by the exercise of our right to 
keep certain of the fighting nations supplied with the 
wherewithal to fight, that we have a legal right to do 
so. I deny, on the other hand, that we have the moral 
privilege of doing so. We cannot consistently profess 
a desire for peace and at the same time furnish war 
with its accoutrements. 

The continuation of the exportation of war materials 
to the Allies means nothing more nor less than the 



234 HYPHENATIONS 

continuation of the war, which in turn means the con- 
tinued disruption of our industrial organization and 
continued harm to our trade. Our interests lie with 
its estoppage. But, say the advocates of England — that 
England so solicitous for our welfare that it loses no 
opportunity to seize and detain another ship when it 
can find the least suspicion for doing so — we have no 
right to prevent this traffic. I say we have. 

Our trade with Italy and Holland and the other 
neutral countries of Europe has been. made by Great 
Britain contingent upon guarantees from these coun- 
tries that there shall be no exportation or re-exporta- 
tion of contraband from their territories to Germany. 
When England can demand that independent European 
states shall waive their right to trade in contraband 
with a belligerent nation, are we not justified in waiv- 
ing that right in our own behalf? There is no question 
of breach of contract involved. We hold war to be 
inhuman and consequently immoral, and we have a per- 
fect right under municipal and international law alike 
to break any immoral contract which may have been 
entered into by parties in Europe with parties in 
this country. 

The sum and substance of the whole matter is this: 
we are assisting in carrying on a war which England 
cannot carry on by herself, to the destruction of our 
own interests; we are doing this, moreover, at the 
expense of our professed desire for peace; and we are 
asked to continue to do it on the ground that we, like 
other nations, have done it in the past and have a right 
to do it in the future. 



HYPHENATIONS 235 

When we consider that to carry on this policy is to 
perpetuate throughout the war the right of England to 
search and detain and possibly to confiscate our car- 
goes and bottoms; that, furthermore, it assists in the 
continuation of the war ; and that it means rendering 
comfort and aid to one belligerent against another, 1 
confess I cannot see either logic or reason in the 
position adopted by those who oppose its cessation. 
We might just as well ally our fleet with that of Eng- 
land or our small but efficient army with that of France 
or Belgium, as to allow our arms factories to ally them- 
selves with the cause of England and France and 
Russia. 

It has been said that the profits which are being 
made on war materials will counterbalance the losses 
suffered by other industries. I have already pointed 
out the fallacy of this argument. These profits are 
but temporary. The other losses are irretrievable. 
And in seeking temporary profits to recoup permanent 
losses we are helping to carry on a war which works 
and must ever work to widen the abyss between the 
two. When the war is over and we take account of 
stock, we shall find things stand exceedingly poorly 
with us, unless we do what we have the power now to 
do, and that is bring the war to an early termination by 
ceasing to feed it. 

I appreciate the influence that is being brought to 
bear upon Washington from English and French and 
Russian sources to defeat the attempt of the American 
people to be true to their professions of faith and to 
their own interests. We should not hark to these syren 



236 HYPHENATIONS 

voices. We know well enough what will be our mead 
when England comes out of this war victorious, if she 
ever does — and God for fend that she may. She cares 
no more for this country than she ever did — and that 
is not at all. She is professing just now the greatest 
friendship for us, and all the while working "military 
necessity" to our undoing. Are we to continue forever 
to put up with this? 

The polite protest recently addressed to the British 
Government in the matter of the treatment by British 
vessels of war of our over-seas trade has apparently 
fallen upon ears deaf to everything but the cry of 
"crushing Germany". The matter cannot be allowed 
to rest there. If England can crush or starve out Ger- 
many she is at liberty to do so, but she must not be 
allowed to crush or starve out this country in the 
attempt. We have no quarrel with England, but we 
are not going to be ridden over rough-shod by her or by 
any other nation. There is the possibility of a quid 
pro quo here as elsewhere. Even admitting all other 
arguments futile, we should stop the exportation of 
war materials to Great Britain until she stops her un- 
warranted interference with our trade with the neutral 
countries of Europe. 

I should like to feel, however, that the American 
people are prepared to place the matter on a higher 
ground and to regard it from the point of view of 
humanitarianism. We have it within our power to 
"put our foot down" now and for good on the principle 
which compels neutral peoples to support war even 
though they are traditionally opposed to war, in theory 



HYPHENATIONS 237 

and in practice, and to say that we will have nothing 
to do with it. When war comes to us, if it ever does, 
we will take care of ourselves, and we can b'est prepare 
for that eventuality by beginning now to conserve our 
own resources, instead of wasting them abroad. Our 
duty is plain and the right to perform that duty is not 
proscribed by any law of man or of nations. Shall we 
do our duty, or shall we go on cringing before the 
threats or adulations of England to our own destruct- 
ion? I have sufficient trust in the independent spirit 
of the American people to feel that I can say how the 
question will be answered. 

BELGIUM'S BETRAYAL. 

I have repeatedly pointed out the historical status 
of the present Kingdom of Belgium as a state erected 
as a buffer to the coast of England and the close co- 
operation which has existed to the end of the main- 
tenance of this status, between the British and Belgian 
governments. The extent of this co-operation, long 
ago sensed by the other Powers of Europe, was first 
made known to the world generally by the publication 
of the documents recently discovered in the archives 
of Brussels. These documents leave no room for 
doubt in any unbiased mind that with or without Bel- 
gium's consent England was prepared and determined 
in the event of a war with Germany to meet the Ger- 
man armies on Belgian soil instead of on her own. 

I regard the confidential memorandum of General 
Ducarme, Chief of the Belgian General Staff, which 



238 HYPHENATIONS 

is reprinted below from the documents discovered, to 
be the most convincing proof of Belgian complicity 
with the British and French governments in preparing 
for a general war on Germany that has yet seen the 
light of publicity. 



"Confidential Letter to the Minister 
"Concerning the Confidential Conversations. 

"Brussels, April 10, 1906. 

"Mr. Minister: 

"I have the honor to report to you briefly about 
the conversations which I had with Lieutenant-Colonel 
Barnardiston and which have already been the subject 
of my oral communications. 

"The first took place in the middle of January. Mr. 
Barnardiston referred to the anxieties of the General 
Staff of his country with regard to the general pol- 
itical situation, and because of the possibility that war 
may soon break out. In case Belgium should be at- 
tacked, the sending of about 100,000 troops was pro- 
vided for. 

"The Lieutenant-Colonel asked me how such a 
measure would be regarded by us. I answered him, 
that from a military point of view it could not be but 
favorable, but that this question of intervention was 
just as much a matter for the political authorities, and 
that, therefore, it was my duty to inform the Minister 
of War about it. 



HYPHENATIONS 239 

"Mr. Barnardiston answered that his Minister in 
Brussels would speak about it with our Minister of 
Foreign Affairs. 

"He proceeded in the following sense : The landing 
of the English troops would take place at the French 
coast in the vicinity of Dunkirk and Calais, so as to 
hasten their movements as much as possible. The entry 
of the English into Belgium would take place only 
after the violation of our neutrality by Germany. A 
landing in Antwerp would take much more time, be- 
cause larger transports would be needed, and because 
on the other hand the safety would be less complete. 

"This admitted, there would be several other points 
to consider, such as railroad transportation, the ques- 
tion of requisitions which the English army could 
make, the question concerning the chief command of 
the allied forces. 

"He inquired whether our preparations were suf- 
ficient to secure the defense of the country during 
the crossing and the transportation of the English 
troops — which he estimated to last about ten days. 

"I answered him that the places Namur and Liege 
were protected from a 'coup de main' and that our 
field army of 100,000 men would be capable of inter- 
vention within four days. 

"After having expressed his full satisfaction with 
my explanations, my visitor laid emphasis on the fol- 
lowing facts : ( 1 ) that our conversation was entirely 
confidential ; (2) that it was not binding on his govern- 
ment; (3) that his Minister, the English General 
Staff, he and I were, up to the present, the only ones 



240 HYPHENATIONS 

informed about the matter; (4) that he did not know 
whether the opinion of his Sovereign has been con- 
sulted. 



"In a following discussion Lieutenant-Colonel Bar- 
nardiston assured me that he had never received con- 
fidential reports of the other military attaches about 
our army. He then gave the exact numerical data of 
the English forces; we could depend on it, that in 
twelve or thirteen days two army corps, four cavalry 
brigades and two brigades of horse infantry would be 
landed. 

"He asked me to study the question of the trans- 
port of these forces to that part of the country where 
they would be useful, and he promised to give me for 
this purpose details about the composition of the land- 
ing army. 

"He reverted to the question concerning the effec- 
tive strength of our field army, and he emphasized 
that no detachments should be sent from this army to 
Namur and Liege, because these places were provided 
with garrisons of sufficient strength. 

"He asked me to direct my attention to the necessity 
of granting the English army the advantages which 
the regulations concerning the military requisitions 
provided for. Finally he insisted upon the question of 
the chief command. 

"I answered him that I could say nothing with re- 
ference to this last point and promised him that I would 
study the other questions carefully. 



HYPHENATIONS 241 



''Later on the English Military Attache confirmed 
his former calculations : twelve days would at least 
be necessary to carry out the landing at the French 
coast. It would take a considerably longer time (one 
to two and one half months) to land 100,000 men in 
Antwerp. 

"Upon my objection that it would be unnecessary 
to await the end of the landing in order to begin with 
the railway transportations, and that it would be bet- 
ter to proceed with these, as when the troops arrived 
at the coast, Lieutenant-Colonel Barnardiston pro- 
mised to give me exact data as to the number of troops 
that could be landed daily. 

"As regards the military requisitions, I told my 
visitor that this question could be easily regulated. 



"The further the plans of the English General Staff 
progressed, the clearer became the details of the prob- 
lem. The Colonel assured me that one-half of the 
English army could be landed within eight days; the 
rest at the conclusion of the twelfth or thirteenth day, 
with the exception of the Horse Infantry, which could 
not be counted upon until later. 

"In spite of this I thought I had to insist again upon 
the necessity of knowing the exact number of the daily 
shipments, in order to regulate the railway transpor- 
tation for every day. 



242 HYPHENATIONS 

"The English Military Attache conversed with me 
about several other questions, namely: 

"(i) The necessity of keeping the operations secret 
and of demanding strict secrecy from the Press; 

"(2) The advantage, which would accrue from 
giving one Belgian officer to each English General 
Staff, one interpreter to each commanding officer, 
and gendarmes to each unit of troops, in order to assist 
the British police troops. 



"In the course of another interview Lieutenant- 
Colonel Barnardiston and I studied the combined 
operations to take place in the event of a German 
offensive with Antwerp as its object and under the 
hypothesis of the German troops marching through 
our country in order to reach the French Ardennes. 

"In this question, the Colonel said he quite agreed 
with the plan which I had submitted to him, and he 
assured me also of the approval of General Grierson, 
Chief of the English General Staff. 

"Other secondary questions which were likewise 
settled, had particular reference to intermediary 
officers, interpreters, gendarmes, maps, photographs 
of the uniforms, special copies, translated into English, 
of some Belgian regulations, the regulations concern- 
ing the import duties on English provisions, to the 
accommodation of the wounded of the allied armies, 
etc. Nothing was resolved on as regards the activity 
which the Government or the Military authorities 
might exert on the Press. 



HYPHENATIONS 243 



"During the final meetings which I had with the 
British Attache, he informed me about the numbers of 
troops which would be daily disembarked at Boulogne, 
Calais and Cherbourg. The distance of the last place, 
which is necessary for technical considerations, will 
involve a certain delay. The first Corps would be 
disembarked on the ioth day, and the second on the 
15th day. Our railways would carry out the transpor- 
tation so that the arrival of the first Corps, either in 
the direction of Brussels-Louvain or of Namur- 
Dinant, would be assured on the nth day, and that of 
the second on the 16th day. 

"I again, for a last time, and as emphatically as I 
could, insisted on the necessity of hastening the sea- 
transports so that the English troops could be with 
us between the nth and 12th day. The happiest and 
most favorable results can be reached by a convergent 
and simultaneous action of the allied forces. But if 
that co-operation should not take place, the failure 
would be most serious. Colonel Barnardiston assured 
me that everything serving to this end would be done. 



"In the course of our conversations, I had occasion 
to convince the British Military Attache that we were 
willing, so far as possible, to thwart the movements of 
the enemy and not to take refuge in Antwerp from the 
beginning. 



244 HYPHENATIONS 

"Lieutenant-Colonel Barnardiston on his part told 
me that at the time, he had little hope for any support 
or intervention on the part of Holland. At the same 
time he informed me that his Government intended to 
transfer the basis of the British commissariat from 
the French coast to Antwerp as soon as all German 
ships were swept off the North Sea. 



"In all our conversations the Colonel regularly in- 
formed me about the secret news which he had con- 
cerning the military circumstances and the situation of 
our Eastern neighbors, etc. At the same time he em- 
phasized that Belgium was under the imperative 
necessity to keep herself constantly informed of the 
happenings in the adjoining Rhinelands. I had to 
admit that with us the surveillance-service abroad was, 
in time of peace, not directly in the hands of the Gen- 
eral Staff, as our Legations had no military Attaches. 
But I was careful not to admit that I did not know 
whether the espionage service which is prescribed in 
our regulations, was in working order or not. But I 
consider it my duty to point out this position which 
places us in a state of evident inferiority to our neigh- 
bors, our presumable enemies. 

"Major-General, Chief of the General Staff. 

(Initials of General Ducarme.) 

"Note. When I met General Grierson at Compiegne, 
during the manoeuvres of 1906, he assured me the 



HYPHENATIONS 245 

result of the re-organization of the English army 
would be that the landing of 150,000 would be assured 
and, that, moreover, they would stand ready for action 
in a shorter time than has been assumed above. 

''Concluded September, 1906." 

(Initials of General Ducarme.) 

An attempt has been made by the British Govern- 
ment to explain away these arrangements on the 
ground that they were no more than "academical dis- 
cussions" ; and in this country to discount their im- 
portance on the ground that the arrangements were to 
be carried out only in the event of the invasion of 
Belgium by a German force. When one reflects upon 
the history of Belgium and of her relations in late years 
with England and France, the hollowness of these con- 
tentions is self-damning. What reason had Germany, 
or we, to assume that they would not be carried out to 
her own destruction ? 

The papers found at Brussels do not prove all that 
Germany knew of these arrangements, but they do 
constitute irrefutable confirmation of this knowledge 
in the eyes of the world ; and they show that when 
she took time by the forelock and entered upon Belgian 
soil she was not encountering the small Belgian nation, 
but Belgium, France and England combined. When 
we regard "the Belgian case" in the light of these 
revelations a great deal has to be retracted of what 
has been said of Germany's conduct in the premises. 



246 HYPHENATIONS 

"1812— 1915." 

The preliminary reply of the British Government to 
the recent note of protest addressed to it by the 
American Government, in the matter of the treatment 
by the British naval authorities of American ships 
and cargoes destined for various neutral ports in 
Europe, which was made public in this country, and 
simultaneously in Great Britain, on Sunday, is as dis- 
appointing as it is unsatisfactory. 

The reply is entirely friendly in tone, as was to be 
expected from the friendly tone of the protest, but it 
fails in being only tonic. There was reason and there 
were conditions calling for redress behind our protest ; 
but we seek in vain in the British reply for any sugges- 
tion that these conditions will be altered or improved 
in the immediate future. The principles of interna- 
tional law for the recognition of which we contended 
are admitted, but no relief under them is promised or 
even suggested. Great Britain holds out strongly and 
irrevocably for the privileges of the sea which it claims 
by virtue of "our own national safety." 

This plea, in extenuation of the unwarrantedly 
severe treatment which our trade has suffered during 
the last few months from British policy, was scarcely 
to be expected from Downing Street. When the 
Chancellor of the German Empire, addressing the 
Reichstag on a matter which involved the preservation 
of the German nation, used the words : "Necessity 
knows no law," they were snatched from his mouth 
and cabled from one end of the world to the other as 



HYPHENATIONS 247 

a sample of "Prussianism," "Treitschkeism," ' Bern- 
hardism," and the Lord knows what. 

True, it was used to condone the seizure of the 
Turkish vessels then building in British yards. True, 
it has since been used to condone the British seizure of 
Egypt. True, it was long ago used to explain the 
seizure of the Danish fleet and the bombardment of 
Copenhagen in 1807. But from the outburst of Brit- 
ish protest against the enunciation of such a policy by 
a German we might have assumed that England was 
ready to relegate it to the limbo of forgotten doctrines. 
It is now revised, however, and with not only the con- 
sent but with the sanction of the British Government. 
We, who know England, knew all along that she not 
only entertained this principle but was ready to put it 
in practice whenever the opportunity presented itself. 
The question for us, Americans, is : How long shall we 
allow the right or privilege of British "national safety'' 
to interfere with the right or privilege of our own 
American safety? 

A further and more detailed reply to our protest is 
promised. When it will come, I do not know. Per- 
haps, when the war is over; which, if we follow Dr. 
Eliot, will not be for years to come. During the inter- 
val, American trade must carry on under British 
supervision — and we know what that means. 

Out of the British argument, I pick this as an 
example of the British stand and British policy : 

"With regard to the seizure of foodstuffs, to which 
your Excellency refers, his Majesty's Government are 
prepared to admit that foodstuffs should not be de- 



248 HYPHENATIONS 

tained and put into a Prize Court without the presump- 
tion that they are intended for the armed forces of the 
enemy or the enemy Government. We believe that 
this rule has been adhered to in practice hitherto, but, 
if the United States Government have instances to the 
contrary, we are prepared to examine them; and it is 
our present intention to adhere to the rule, though we 
cannot give an unlimited and unconditional undertak- 
ing, in view of the departure by those against whom 
we are fighting from hitherto accepted rules of civili- 
zation and humanity and the uncertainty as to the ex- 
tent to which such rules may be violated by them in 
future." 

I should like to dilate upon this point. The British 
Foreign Office apparently wishes to make our expor- 
tation of foodstuffs to the neutral countries of Europe 
contingent upon the conduct of war by its enemies 
according to the recognized rules of civilization and 
humanity. This sounds, in the first place, very much 
like the "atrocity tales" which were long ago discounted 
in this country. Tt sounds, in the second place, like a 
fictitious argument raised to offset a legitimate one. 
Assuming for the moment — what no American will 
assume — that the Germans are not conducting their 
war as becomes a civilized people, what have we to do 
with that? Are we to be held responsible for the 
actions of others? Are we to be penalized because 
a people with whom we have nothing to do chooses to 
prosecute its war in a manner distasteful to England ? 

I say : No ! We are dealing solely with England, and 
with England under rules written largely by herself, on 



HYPHENATIONS 249 

a matter which concerns no one but ourselves and 
England. 

The British note contains one further interesting 
point : namely, that Great Britain does not propose to 
be embarrassed in her treatment of neutral European 
nations, notably Norway, Sweden, Holland, Italy and 
Greece, and that Great Britain would prefer to have 
her troubles with us rather than with these other na- 
tions; and that she would prefer to prevent contra- 
bands from going to these neutral nations rather than 
prevent them continuing on to Germany. 

Great Britain does not want to complicate her diplo- 
matic relations with the European nations. She pre- 
fers to treat us with whatever degree of severity is 
necessary. She assumes we will not demand our 
rights. 

It might be interesting to know what arrangements 
exist between Sir Edward Grey and our Secretary of 
State bearing on the extent to which Great Britain 
can go in this proceeding and that at some future date 
Sir Edward Grey may present to the British Cabinet 
and the British people. 

The one live question involved in the whole pro- 
ceeding dissolves itself into a matter of policy, as to 
our stand in the treatment of neutral trade. Great 
Britain can -de finitely and absolutely regulate our com- 
merce with Norway, Sweden, and the other countries 
of Europe. Then we are in nowise different in posi- 
tion from Canada. If, with the control of the sea, 
there goes the absolute right of England to determine 
what shall be carried on the seas and to what port 



250 HYPHENATIONS 

of destination it shall go, then let us bravely face the 
fact that the seas belong to Great Britain and that we 
must abide by her decision. 

The British note might have been compressed into 
a few sentences, as, perhaps, as follows : 

"Dear Secretary: 

"As has been arranged with you, we shall jolly well 
do as we please. Do not, however, let the American 
people think this. The best arguments we can make 
are those of 'national necessity' and charges of 'un- 
civilized conduct' on the part of our enemies. Can 
you make any suggestion for our formal reply to be 
delivered at some future date? 

"God bless neutrality. It's working fine. 

B. Grey. 

"P. S. — How long can you hold up public opinion 
in America, and how soon can we get the war material 
we need?" 

It is not what England says but what England does 
that will finally determine public opinion in America. 
An exchange of correspondence between Downing 
Street and our Department of State will not alleviate 
conditions in our trade centers unless our cargoes ac- 
tually reach the destinations to which they are con- 
signed; and the time is not far off when a protest 
will be handed to the Administration at Washington 
from the American public which will leave no question 
of doubt as to its meaning. 



HYPHENATIONS 251 

We asked the British Government to desist from 
its fooling with our trade. We asked it in the politest 
of terms. We have been replied to in terms equally 
polite. But Britain still maintains her "right" of search 
— the quotation marks are taken from a British author, 
G. H. Perris — annoying and distasteful to ourselves 
and to all neutral nations. 

The question for the American people is : How long- 
are we going to put up with this unwarranted inter- 
ference with our legitimate privileges upon a sea that 
is supposedly free to all? There must come a day 
when we shall be compelled to tell England that she 
does not own the waters of the world — that we have 
rights upon them equal with her own. Is that day 
so far distant? 

THE CASE OF THE "DACIA." 

The steamship "Dacia/' formerly a Hamburg-Amer- 
ican liner, was recently purchased by Edward N. Brei- 
tung, a Michigan mining-engineer. She was duly ad- 
mitted to American register, and at the present time 
flies the American flag. She is manned by an Amer- 
ican crew, loaded with cotton at a southern port, and 
intends to sail from there to Bremen, Germany. We 
have been advised by Great Britain that if this inten- 
tion is carried out the "Dacia" will be seized and taken 
before a British prize court. I am sure that the Amer- 
ican people would like to know why. 

The British contention is apparently based on the 
ground, already intimated, that the sale was not bona 



252 HYPHENATIONS 

fide. "Breitung" sounds like a German name — and 
England can hear German sounds in every breeze these 
days. Were she as solicitous for the friendly treat- 
ment of American trade as her recent reply to our 
protest against her unfriendly treatment of it would 
seem to have b'een worded to infer, she would give us 
an eyeful of proof of the illegitimacy involved in the 
transfer of the "Dacia" from the German to the Amer- 
ican flag. As long as she refuses to or refrains from 
doing so, we cannot but regard the vessel as having 
been legitimately purchased and registered. 

Assuming that it was so purchased and registered, 
what claim has England to the asserted right that she 
can properly prevent it from taking a legitimate place 
in the over-seas commerce of this country? 

The Declaration of London of 1909 — although Eng- 
land threw it overboard as soon as the war began and 
we soon after — remains the latest and highest expres- 
sion of international legal opinion on the point in- 
volved. The case of the "Dacia" is specifically cover- 
ed by it. Article 56 of this Declaration, so often 
quoted, reads as follows: 

''The transfer of an enemy vessel to a neutral flag 
effected after the outbreak of hostilities, is void unless 
it is proved that such transfer was not made in order 
to evade the consequences to which an enemy vessel, as 
such, is exposed. 

"There, however, is an absolute presumption that 
a transfer is void: 



HYPHENATIONS 258 

"(i) If the transfer has been made during a voyage 
or in a blockaded port. 

"(2) If a right to repurchase or recover the vessel is 
reserved to the vendor. 

"(3) If the requirements of the municipal law 
governing the right to fly the flag under which the 
vessel is sailing, have not been fulfilled. 

There is no "absolute presumption" under this rule 
that the "Dacia" was not properly acquired and ad- 
mitted to register. Great Britain must therefore fall 
back upon the phrase "to avoid the consequences to 
which an enemy vessel, as such, is exposed." What, 
then, are these consequences, and what does the phrase 
mean? 

The "Dacia" was, until a few weeks ago, a German 
ship, flying the German flag, which, to escape capture 
on the high seas, was compelled to intern in an 
American port. She could have rested and rusted 
there, until the end of the war. That was the only con- 
sequence to which as an enemy vessel she was exposed, 
which her owners could wish to escape. While she 
rotted or rusted there, American cotton and other non- 
contraband commodities, might, for all England cared, 
rot in other American ports. We have been told that 
England was gracious to us in not placing cotton upon 
the list of her self-declared contrabands. We should 
undoubtedly be thankful for this, and for all the small 
favors which we receive from her hands. We should 
like a few man-size favors, however. When the North 



254 HYPHENATIONS 

Sea is mined by British command, preventing cotton 
from going to Scandinavia, and when we are forbidden 
to purchase ships in which to transport it to other 
neutral countries in Europe, the importance of Eng- 
land's graciousness is diminished. 

Allow us for a moment to forget that the world is 
at war, and think that it is still at peace. Allow us to 
imagine then that an unprecedented demand comes 
from Europe for our cotton and other crops. There 
are not enough bottoms in which to ship the cargoes 
necessary to meet the demand. What does the Ameri- 
can merchant do ? Permit the demand to pass un-met ? 
Certainly not. The bottoms are secured by "begging, 
borrowing or stealing." Would Great Britain assume 
in times of peace to deny us the right to acquire ships 
wherever we could or whenever we pleased? We are 
at peace to-day. We hold that we are not to be gov- 
erned by the dictates of the European war. Our com- 
merce demands that we have more vessels than readily 
present themselves. The internment of the German 
mercantile fleet and the conversion of many of the 
British vessels to naval use has robbed American 
commerce of the carriers on which for years it has been 
accustomed to depend. We must have substitutes, or 
starve — commercially. We are told — by Great Britain, 
that we cannot have them. 

This is not a matter between England and Germany, 
but a matter between England and ourselves. Were 
we to buy up all the German ships interned in our 
harbors the purchase price, even if it went into the 
Imperial Exchequer, would not enable Germany to 



HYPHENATIONS 255 

prosecute her present military operations over a week. 
The plea, therefore, that we would be aiding an enemy 
of England by purchasing and paying for such ships 
at the present juncture is too hollow in the light of the 
aid that we are giving England herself, to be listened 
to. What England really has in mind is the repression 
of American trade along with the destruction of 
Germany's. 

The problem which England has on her hand is a 
double one. She would come out of this war in not 
better shape than she entered it, if in place of German 
competition she found herself face to face with a still 
more powerful American trade enemy. With her left 
hand, therefore, she feels compelled to deliver us a 
blow, while with her right she is attempting to strangle 
Germany. Whatever luck certain Americans may- 
wish her in the latter endeavor, I do not think that 
there breathes the man in this country who does not 
feel it his right and his duty to protest against any 
admission that she may continue in the former. 

The policy of England has during the last few 
months been dictated by a desire to annihilate German 
trade and repress the American. It is, of course, to 
the disadvantage of Great Britain to have us supply 
Norway, Sweden, Greece, Holland and Italy with the 
products and manufactures which they were wont to 
obtain from that country. In attempting to befog the 
issue with regard to our trade with foreign nations, she 
has the purpose of reducing that trade to the minimum 
and using the excuse of active belligerency against 



256 HYPHENATIONS 

Germany in order to stifle our rapidly growing trade 
with neutral European nations. 

I ask any American whether we shall permit Great 
Britain to dictate how large or how small our trade 
between nations or between states or between cities 
shall be. If Great Britain can decide that we are doing 
entirely too much business with Italy, she can also 
step in and say that we are doing too much business 
with China, because the British cruisers sweep the 
seas. There is no reason under international law or 
morality why we should permit England to dictate to 
us in this or in any other matter. 

I can foresee the day, and it will be at no far distant 
time, when we shall be obliged either to submit to the 
fact that Great Britain does not want us to be a world 
power in trade or to insist upon our rights in a manner 
so firm that even England will heed the warning. 

HUMBUGGING AMERICA. 

It is no secret that of all the countries of Europe 
Great Britain has through the time of our existence 
as an independent nation been the least friendly to 
ourselves. Although France assisted us in the secur- 
ing of our independence from the British crown — she 
did so only because she wanted to deal another blow to 
England. Although Russia stood by in the War of 
the States to offset British designs, she did so only 
because she could not forget the Crimea and England's 
historical enmity to herself. Alaska and Louisiana 
were alike sold to us because they would otherwise 



HYPHENATIONS 257 

have come into the possession of the arch-enemy of 
Europe. We can forgive France and Russia for these 
hollow protestations of friendship : but can we forgive 
England for her recent attempt to call us to her 
"standards of Empire" on the ground that she has al- 
ways been our friend? All history tells us how 
fatuous have been her promises and her explanations. 

The developments since the outbreak of the present 
war have served only to confirm Great Britain's con- 
tempt for the United States when she cannot use the 
United States for her own purposes. We cannot but 
recall the early solicitation of British writers for "the 
goodwill of America" — that ultimate desideratum 
which was to do so much for Britain in both a moral 
and a material way. 

We — and now I speak as a New Englander — gave 
England our moral support. We — and I speak not as 
a New Englander — reap the reward of having done so. 

I quote a cable despatch from London to the New 
York Tribune of yesterday : 



Widespread investigation shows a great change in 
sentiment among the English people toward America 
following and consequent upon the American note of 
protest against detention of ships and cargoes. This 
change is much more marked and important in the 
provinces than in London. 

The feeling has grown up, especially in the provin- 
ces, that America was a great country of the same 
people, the same language and the same aspirations, 
which would stand always behind England in her 



258 HYPHENATIONS 

struggle. It was felt that if America had not actually 
stepped in and taken a hand in the war, at any rate 
she was always there ready to lend a hand if England 
became too hard pressed. Indeed, not infrequently 
was heard the query: "When is America coming in?" 

The war, in fact, is a more serious matter through- 
out the provinces, a more intimate and important part 
of daily life, than in London, where the favorite word 
is "business as usual," and throughout the provinces 
the people have found particular comfort in the feel- 
ing that America stood behind them in their great 
endeavor and, if need be, America would stand with 
them. 

Those in touch with official affairs knew for a long 
time that a certain amount of friction was growing up 
over the question of the treatment of neutral shipping, 
but this was carefully kept from the people at large, 
and, consequently, the American note came as a great 
shock to the vast majority of the people, who had been 
deriving such comfort and feeling of security from the 
belief that America was with them hand in glove. 

First amazement, and then resentment, character- 
ized the reception of the note. The people, who had 
never studied the questions of commerce and shipping 
and were ignorant of the facts on which the note was 
based, jumped to the conclusion that America, which 
they had believed was actuated by altruism and a sen- 
timent of friendship, in realty cared only for the dollar. 
The most unfortunate part is that the facts behind the 
/\merican protest have never been placed before the 
English people, and the feeling of resentment is grow- 
ing rapidly as discussion continues. 



HYPHENATIONS 259 

This is the situation in the provinces, and one which 
is fast spreading in London — a rapidly growing feel- 
ing of resentment caused by the American note of 
protest and undoubtedly due in considerable degree to 
ignorance of the facts on which the protest was based. 

On the other hand, in better informed quarters, not- 
ably the London financial district, the feeling is better 
described as one of somewhat amused toleration, with 
a large mixture of contempt. Financial men, who are 
better acquainted with the facts, while naturally taking 
the British side, feel that America has some basis for 
her protest. There is no question in their minds that 
an amicable settlement will be reached, and this is the 
reason for their toleration. But they also express 
amusement that America's first real action in connec- 
tion with the war should come over a question of dol- 
lars and cents and ask, "Why should this great country, 
such a stickler for treaties and conventions, raise no 
whisper or protest against Germany's breaking of 
treaties to which America is a party, make no protest 
against the destruction of cathedrals and laying waste 
of an innocent country, but protest so vehemently and 
strongly when the dollar comes into question?" 

Everywhere that question is asked and in each indi- 
vidual case in which resentment is analyzed that is the 
final answer every Englishman brings all arguments. 



Soft, honeyed words, these, and friendly! When, 
may I ask, were the British ever assured that 'America 
stood behind them in their great endeavor" — when, 
save by Dr. Eliot's vapid and un-American utterances ? 



260 HYPHENATIONS 

I like "resentment" — because it sounds so "bally Eng- 
lish" and so really truthful. "Amused toleration" is 
another term which comes well from British mouths 
to American ears. But of all the cable contains what 
the American will most like is the suggestion that his 
perspective, so far as this war is concerned, is governed 
by the Almighty Dollar. There is something about 
the phrase that appeals to me. Something so reminis- 
cent of the almighty shilling and pound sterling for 
which the British are fighting in this war. 

While British journals are flooding us and the rest 
of the neutral world with stories how best Englishmen 
can seize the German markets — when free plots are 
being given away in London to those who will erect 
thereon factories to compete against German factories 
— when we know, in short, the war to be one on the 
part of England to destroy German trade, and conse- 
quently German dollars and cents, or "marks," if you 
will, we can well put up with being twitted with seek- 
ing for dollars. Will the English press tell us, then, 
what England is after, if England is not after the Eng- 
lish equivalent of these monetary units? 

The cable of the Tribune was apparently an out- 
come of the recent protest against the treatment of 
American trade by the British naval authorities. I can 
readily understand why in this connection the English 
should be angered. We do not, as they expected us 
to do, agree to their domination of our overseas trade. 
The English are consequently surprised — surprised 
that anyone should assume to question their right to 



HYPHENATIONS 261 

rule the seas common to all the world. And when one 
surprises an Englishman he angers him. 

What we should like to know is : What are we get- 
ting out of a war prosecuted by Great Britain for the 
crushing of a commercial rival, a war which has cost 
us millions of dollars in charity — which England her- 
self should have borne, in industrial disturbance and 
in interference with our foreign commerce; a war in 
which we have seen a million men, against whom we 
have no enmity, go to their deaths ; a war alike disas- 
trous to ourselves and the whole world? I am glad 
that England has spoken as she did in this cable to the 
Tribune. We know what she thinks of us. We can 
now discard the promises of the Cambridge School and 
readjust our policy toward Great Britain on the basis 
of a rediscovered appreciation of her historical attitude 
toward this country. We know now what England 
thinks of us : shall we allow the hour to pass without 
telling England just what we think of her? 

HUSTLING FOR ENGLAND. 

Apparently it is a much more simple matter for 
the British Government to get what it wants from 
our own Government than it is for the American 
Government to get what it wants from the British. The 
present Carranzista imbroglio is an exemplification of 
this new truism. Certain British oil people in the 
Panuco District of Mexico have refused to pay a levy 
made upon them by the de facto government of the 
district, and, in consequence, an embargo has been 



262 HYPHENATIONS 

placed upon their exportation of oil from Mexico. Sir 
Cecil Spring-Rice, Britain's Ambassador to the United 
States, whose name rolls so succulently around the 
tongues of Washington just now, presents a demand 
that this country take action in the premises. And we 
take it. We immediately wire to our Consul-General 
at the front to threaten the local government with 
"serious consequences" if the British interests are not 
respected. 

The man in the street is not unacquainted with 
Britain's reason at the present juncture in demanding 
that her oil supply be kept open. I may venture the 
suggestion that he is equally acquainted with the inter- 
ference with our own oil trade abroad from which we 
have suffered at the hands of Great Britain. The 
humorist, once more, comes front and centre with his 
"I don't care who wins, so long as Germany is beaten." 
We don't care where oil goes, apparently, so long as 
it does not go to Germany. We have overlooked all 
England's demands in the matter of our own oil car- 
goes destined for neutral ports of Europe, because 
possibly thev might eventually find their way into 
Germany or allied territory. We are ready enough, 
in the present contingency, to help England out of her 
predicament by admitting her right to stop all Amer- 
ican cargoes of oil destined for countries contiguous 
to Germany. We strain a point, however, when we 
call upon a de facto government in Mexico — a govern- 
ment we worked to establish — to abandon its fiscal 
policy in order that Great Britain may feed her vessels 
of war with oil from this continent. 



HYPHENATIONS 263 

The British regard for the Monroe Doctrine is 
clearly developed in the communications, written and 
otherwise, which have passed between the British 
Embassy in Washington and our Department of State, 
in connection with this case. We have been told ex- 
plicitly enough that unless we at once over-ride the de 
facto laws of a certain section of Mexico in the interest 
of Britain's present military necessity Great Britain 
will over-ride them herself. We have sent a protest, 
which we should not have sent, in this sense. What 
attention will be paid to it I do not know ; but are we 
going to go to war with Mexico or with Carranza in 
Mexico in order that Great Britain may have oil for 
her vessels of war? 

I recognize our obligations under the Monroe Doc- 
trine — but I realize as well our immunities and the 
immunities of other countries in this hemisphere. 
Great Britain has no right to demand that we should 
ride rough-shod over the law of Mexico — and Carran- 
za's law is the law of Mexico in the district which he 
controls for the time being — simply because she wants 
oil. Any action on her part of a hostile nature against 
Mexico on this ground must be regarded as casus belli 
in defense of the Monroe Doctrine. There is no other 
answer to Great Britain in this connection. 

The surprising activity of the State Department in 
the matter of the British demands upon Mexico might 
better have been exerted in the interest of an elucida- 
tion of the questions involved in the case of the "Da- 
cia." She still lies at her dock, legitimately purchased 
by an American citizen, regularly admitted to Amer- 



264 HYPHENATIONS 

ican register, commanded and manned by Americans, 
loaded with a non-contraband cargo and destined to 
sail for a port in Europe — anchored there by a British 
protest as firmly as if the strongest steel hawsers held 
her to her moorings. There is no divergence of opinion 
in this country — outside of Washington — as to her 
right to sail to her port of destination. There is diver- 
gence of opinion in England, however. The (London) 
Daily News a day or so ago advocated the concession 
by the British Government of our claim not only to 
despatch the "Dacia" but to purchase and operate the 
other German vessels interned in our ports. Other 
British papers, alarmed at the "reaction in American 
sympathy" as a result of Great Britain's treatment of 
our trade, have advocated the same thing. But the 
British Government is immovable in its determination 
that the "Dacia" shall not sail for Europe, even though 
we ourselves have unwarrantedly conceded a point in 
the British contention by offering to change her des- 
tination from Bremen to Rotterdam. The right of the 
"Dacia" to sail wherever she will on the seas and into 
what ports was given to her by the fact of her ad- 
mission to American registry. She stands to-day in no 
respect different from any other American vessel, and 
her rights as such should be respected and conserved 
by the authorities in Washington. When the Amer- 
ican people are one on this point and the English 
divided in the matter of their protest against the right 
of the "Dacia" to sail the seas, it would seem that 
there is cause for determined action on the part of 



HYPHENATIONS 265 

the American Government to uphold our right in the 
case. 

I admit that the present Administration stands in a 
difficult position. It has to choose between serving the 
American people and serving the British people. I 
have known administrations which would not 
have found, and did not find, it hard to make the 
choice. A question which forces itself upon me at the 
moment is this: Is President Woodrow Wilson re- 
presenting British interests or American interests ? We 
blundered under him into Mexico; and under him we 
blundered out — and took our hands off the country. 
We were told at Indianapolis recently that so long 
as he captained the team no other country should lay 
hostile hands upon it. Assuming that we are correctly 
informed from Washington the day is not far distant 
when we must do one or another of a few things. We 
shall have to sacrifice another score or more of "blue- 
eyed boys" to Mexican lead ; or we shall have to allow 
a few blue-eyed Britishers to be sacrificed in contra- 
vention of the Monroe Doctrine, and then send a great 
many Americans to their death to re-establish our right 
to the largest voice in this hemisphere. The prospect 
is not alluring. The hour is at hand to tell Sir Cecil 
Spring-Rice that if Mexico or any part of Mexico 
wishes to establish laws for its own benefit — which it 
aas a generally recognized right to do — those laws will 
not be questioned nor over-ridden by this country in 
the interest of the present military necessity of Great 
Britain. The British companies about Tampico should 
pay their taxes — or take the consequences. It is not 



266 HYPHENATIONS 

a matter with which the Government of the United 
States should, or legitimately can, interest itself. 

We have been asked by the British Government to 
investigate the alleged violation by certain South 
American countries of their proclaimed neutrality, in 
jonnection with the operation of wireless stations ; we 
nave been asked to allow the British naval authorities 
free play with our commerce to neutral Europe; we 
have had and still have our own ports blockaded by 
British cruisers ; we have had our mails tampered with 
by Great Britain, our citizens detained and subjected 
to insult and injuries, and others of them shot by ir- 
responsible Canadians ; we have been denied practically 
all news of the war but what England chose to give 
us ; we have been flooded with British propagandist 
fabrications ; we are now being urged by British lec- 
turers to enlist to fight England's battles for her — and 
for all this we have fallen. We are not allowed to buy 
a merchant ship and sail her with 'an American and 
non-contraband cargo. We are not allowed to suggest 
our right to occupy the markets which the belligerents 
have abandoned. We are called a nation which bows 
its knees to the Almighty Dollar. And for all this we 
stand. And all the while we are having our knees 
forced down in compelled suppliancy to Almightr 
Britain. 

When it is a matter of protecting British interests 
Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan are immediately and always 
"on the job." But when our own interests are involved 
they are either absent on the Chautauqua circuit or are 
oblivious of their duties. One half of the energy that 



HYPHENATIONS 267 

has been expended during the last five months in serv- 
ing England, sanely expended in the service of the 
United States, would have rendered unnecessary any 
allusion to the mooted point as to whether Mr. Wilson 
regards himself as President of the United States or 
His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to this country. 
While Great Britain is destroying our commerce on 
the seas, we content ourselves with addressing to her 
pink chits which neither demand nor require an early 
reply. The process goes on at England's pleasure. 
When, however, British war interests are affected we 
send a peremptory note to a friendly nation and 
threaten it with "serious consequences." We even 
offer Great Britain the right to take her own measures 
against Mexico — in connection with which Mr. Wil- 
son's Indianapolis promises, so well received in Mexico 
City, assume the color of the chameleon. We throw 
the Monroe Doctrine to the wind that we may serve an 
hour — and an enemy. 

I say frankly that I voted for Woodrow Wilson for 
President of the United States. I say with equal frank- 
ness that I regret having done so. I am a firm be- 
liever in the general principles of the democratic party 
as they were urged in past years by the great leaders 
of that political belief; but I cannot subscribe to the 
willing surrender of my country to any other. I believe 
that Mr. Wilson has departed not only from the prin- 
ciples of democracy but as well from those of Ameri- 
canism. Whether I am right or wrong another few 
months will give the American people a chance to de- 
cide. They should not wait this long, however, to 



268 HYPHENATIONS 

protest firmly and unmistakably to Washington against 
the continuance of a policy of subservient truckling 
to a people who have always, since the time when we 
refused to further accept dictation from them in mat- 
ters in which nature gave us the right to dictate to our- 
selves, been the inveterate enemies of this country. 



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